Oxidative DNA damage is associated with inflammatory response, insulin resistance and microvascular complications in type 2 diabetes

Urinary markers of nucleic acid oxidation may be useful biomarkers in diabetes. It has been demonstrated that T2DM patients have an increased level of oxidative DNA damage; however, it is unclear whether increased DNA damage may be related to a greater degree of inflammation and insulin resistance. Thus, the aim of this present study was to investigate the relation of the impact of oxidative DNA damage, assessed by urinary 8-OHdG, on the levels of inflammatory cytokines, as well as insulin resistance. In addition, we also investigated the diagnostic ability of urinary 8-OHdG in the identification of microvascular complications in T2DM.A case-control study, enrolling 22 healthy controls and 54 subjects with T2DM, was performed to evaluate the relation between oxidative DNA damage and interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-1,tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), IL-10, and Homeostasis Model Assessment (HOMA-IR) index. T2DM patients presented higher urinary 8-OHdG, IL-6, IL-1, TNF-alpha levels and HOMA-IR, and lower IL-10 levels than control subjects. Moreover, urinary 8-OHdG levels were significantly higher in the group T2DM with microvascular complications when compared to the without complications. The areas under the curve for urinary 8-OHdG and urinary albumin were, respectively, 0.836 (P<0.001) and 0.786 (P=0.002). Thus, urinary 8-OHdG has a slightly higher ability to discriminate microvascular complications in T2DM compared with urinary albumin. It was also demonstrated that T2DM patients with higher median of urinary 8-OHdG had significantly elevated levels of IL-6, TNF-alpha and HOMA-IR, and decreased IL-10 levels. Our findings showed that T2DM patients with higher urinary 8-OHdG levels showed a greater inflammatory degree and higher insulin resistance. It is possible to speculate that T2DM patients present a cascade of events as increasing metabolic abnormalities such as insulin resistance and inflammatory activation, as well as increased ROS generation factors that may contribute directly to greater oxidative DNA damage. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.