Previous studies reported that PTEN/Akt signal pathway participated in the regulation of diabetes mellitus [25, 26] and DR progression [27], and overexpressed miR-25-3p alleviated high-glucose induced renal tubular epithelial cell death by regulating PTEN/Akt signal pathway [31], which were also verified in this study in RPE cells. The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is diabetes mellitus.