Increased small extracellular vesicle levels and decreased miR-126 levels associated with atrial fibrillation and coexisting diabetes mellitus.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most prevalent cardiac arrhythmia. Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the risk factors for the development of stroke and thromboembolism in patients with AF. Early identification may reduce the incidence of complications and mortality in AF patients.

Hypothesis: AF patients with DM have different pattern of small extracellular vesicle (sEV) levels and sEV-derived microRNA (miRNA) expression compared with those without DM.

Methods: We compared sEV levels and sEV-miRNA expression in plasma from AF patients with and without DM using nanoparticle tracking analysis and droplet digital polymerase chain reaction, respectively.

Results: We observed a significant increase in total sEV levels (p = .004) and a significant decrease in sEV-miR-126 level (p = .004) in AF patients with DM. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed a positive association between total sEV levels and AF with DM (p = .019), and a negative association between sEV-miR-126 level and AF with DM (p = .031). The combination of clinical data, total sEVs, and sEV-miR-126 level had an area under the curve of 0.968 (p < .0001) for discriminating AF with DM, which was shown to be significantly better than clinical data analysis alone (p = .0368).

Conclusions: These results suggest that an increased level of total sEV and a decreased sEV-miR-126 level may play a potential role in the pathophysiology and complications of AF with DM, especially endothelial dysfunction, and can be considered as an applied biomarker for distinguishing between AF with and without DM.