Diabetic Hemodialysis: Vitamin D Supplementation and its Related Signaling Pathways Involved in Insulin and Lipid Metabolism

Background: This study was conducted to determine the effects of vitamin D supplementation on some of the gene expressions related to insulin and lipid metabolism in diabetic hemodialysis (HD) patients. Methods: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial was carried out in 55 patients with diabetic HD. The current project used two groups in which each subject received vitamin D supplements (50,000 IU, n=28) or placebo (50,000 IU, n=27) every 2 weeks for 12 weeks. Gene expression analyses (RT-PCR) were included to obtain the rate of gene expression of the related insulin and lipid metabolism genes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with diabetic HD. Results: Our data revealed that consumption of vitamin D supplementation enables to overexpress the peroxisome proliferation-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-γ) (P=0.001), AKT (P=0.04), PI3K (P=0.02), insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS1) (P0.008) and glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT-4) (P=0.01) and downregulate the expression of protein kinase C (PKC) (P=0.001) in patients with diabetic HD than control group following the 12-week intervention. In addition, vitamin D supplementation downregulated low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) (P=0.03) expression in the subjects with diabetic HD than the control group. Vitamin D supplementation did not show any effects on the expression of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 1 (PDK1) (P=0.37), IRS2 (P=0.90) and lipoprotein (a) [Lp(a)] (P=0.05). Conclusion: Our findings confirmed that diabetic HD subjects who received the vitamin D supplementation (for 12 weeks), showed a significant overexpression in the PPAR-γ, AKT, PI3K, IRS1 and GLUT4 genes, and also showed a significant downregulation in the PKC and LDLR genes. Moreover, no effects on PDK1, IRS2 and Lp(a) expression were observed.