VEGFA and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Additionally, although retinal HIF-1α, a VEGF transcriptional regulator, was increased in both types of DM relative to CON as demonstrated in Figure 5(c), T1DM exhibited a much greater increase of HIF-1α expression compared to T2DM, which was confirmed by both Western blotting and immunofluorescence (Figures 5(e) and 5(g)).