Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Aug 15, 2021; 12(8): 1304-1311
Published online Aug 15, 2021. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v12.i8.1304
Polymorphisms in HIF-1a gene are not associated with diabetic retinopathy in China
Yue-Hong Liu, Chang Guo, Yi-Qiong Sun, Qiang Li
Yue-Hong Liu, Department of Endocrinology, Hainan Cancer Hospital, Haikou 570312, Hainan Province, China
Chang Guo, Yi-Qiong Sun, Qiang Li, Department of Endocrinology, Shenzhen University General Hospital, Shenzhen 518055,Guangdong Province, China
Author contributions: Liu YH is responsible for implementation of the study; Guo C and Sun YQ are responsible for the collation of data and the formation of research reports; Li Q is responsible for the design of the project and the review of articles.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Medical Ethics Review Committee of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Qiang Li, MD, PhD, Chief Physician, Department of Endocrinology, Shenzhen University General Hospital, No. 1098, Xueyuan Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong Province, China. qianglisz@163.com
Received: February 23, 2021
Peer-review started: February 23, 2021
First decision: March 30, 2021
Revised: April 9, 2021
Accepted: July 12, 2021
Article in press: July 12, 2021
Published online: August 15, 2021
Processing time: 167 Days and 0.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a potent endothelial cell mitogen, plays a crucial role in neovascularization of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (DR). The human VEGF gene encoding VEGF was identified to be the first target genes of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1). Therefore, HIF-1a is supposed to be involved in pathology of DR. Here, we investigate whether the polymorphisms in HIF-1a gene are associated with DR.