Fig. 1

miR-223-3p is upregulated in individuals with type 2 diabetes and diabetic retinopathy. A A sub-cohort of individuals selected from the Qatar Genome Programme (QGP) participants were stratified into T2D patients and Normal controls based on self-reporting of a physician diagnosis for diabetes or HbA1c levels greater than 6.5%. T2D individuals with diabetic retinopathy (T2D-DR) were identified by examining the retinal images. B Principal component analysis based on biallelic germline variants presents the distribution of case- and control-study samples across the nationwide QGP population with no selection bias in the representative sample. C mi-R223 was identified as the top-upregulated miRNA in our target panel with elevated expression in T2D. D Amongst T2D individuals, miR-223-3p expression was significantly higher in plasma from individuals with DR (T2D-DR) compared to Controls and T2D individuals without DR. Boxplots show the distribution of relative expression for miR-223-3p across all study samples