Potential diagnostic and therapeutic role of tsRNAs in insulin resistance and metabolic diseases: A review.

Insulin resistance (IR) serves as a core pathogenic mechanism underlying metabolic diseases and critically drives their progression. Obesity exacerbates the risk of developing IR and metabolic diseases and has now risen to epidemic proportions globally. There is growing evidence that obesity, IR and metabolic diseases are closely linked. tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) are non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that are widely found in prokaryotes and eukaryotes and are stably expressed in body fluids such as blood and urine. Moreover, mounting evidence has established a strong association between tsRNAs and metabolic disorders. And tsRNAs are involved in disease pathology. In this paper, we review the mechanism of IR and its association with inflammation, obesity, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), and metabolic syndrome (MetS), and we also introduce the role of tsRNAs therein and their potential as biomarkers and therapeutic targets. However, the study of tsRNAs in IR and metabolic diseases is still in its infancy, and this paper also suggests some possible future research directions.