Research Article Serum Levels of Progranulin Are Closely Associated with

Copyright © 2015 Lin Xu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. Progranulin (PGRN) was recently introduced as a novel marker of chronic inflammatory response in obesity and type 2 diabetes capable of directly affecting the insulin signaling pathway. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between PGRN and type 2 diabetics with microvascular complications. Methods. PGRN serum levels and glucose metabolism related substance were measured in 84 type 2 diabetic patients with or without microangiopathies and 12 health persons. Further analyses of serum PGRN in different stages of diabetic microangiopathies were conducted. Results. Serum levels of PGRN were markedly higher in type 2 diabetic patients withmicroangiopathies. PGRN serum levels increased with the progress of diabeticmicroangiopathies with significantly highest values detectable in clinical diabetic nephropathy (CDN) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) groups. SerumPGRNconcentrations in all individuals positively andmarkedly correlatedwith systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), body mass index (BMI), triglyceride (TG), urinary albumin excretion rate (UAER), blood urea nitrogen (BUN)