Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the growing public health threats globally and as one of the common serious microvascular complications of DM, diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of irreversible visual impairments and blindness. There is growing concern about the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the pathogenesis of DR. This meta-analysis was designed to collect those published miRNA expression profiling studies that compared the miRNA expression profiles in the biological samples of DR patients with those in the control group. Eight publications were finally included in the meta-analysis, and a total of 93 differentially expressed miRNAs were reported. Although six miRNAs were reported in at least two studies and with the consistent direction, after stratification by the type of biological samples, miR-320a was consistently reported to be upregulated in two serum sample-based studies and miR-423-5p was consistently reported to be upregulated in two vitreous humor sample-based studies. miR-27b was consistently reported to be downregulated in two serum sample-based studies. In conclusion, the results of this meta-analysis of human DR miRNAs' expression profiling studies might provide some clues of the potential biomarkers of DR. Further investigation of the mechanisms of miRNAs and more external validation studies are warranted with the aim of developing new diagnostic markers for preventing or reversing DR.
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