BDNF and diabetic retinopathy: In diabetic retinopathy, expression of many LncRNAs, including metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1), antisense noncoding RNA in the INK4 locus (ANRIL), nuclear-enriched abundant transcript 1 (NEAT1), brain-derived neurotrophic factor antisense (BDNF-AS) and HOXA distal transcript antisense RNA (HOTTIP) are upregulated, contributing to an increase in inflammatory markers, VEGF, angiogenesis, apoptosis and oxidative stress [11,12,13,14].