KIT and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Furthermore, Egan et al. claimed that the low levels of the called “putative EPCs” (pEPCs; CD34+/CD31+CD34+/CD117+CD34+/CD133+CD34+/KDR+CD34+), in addition to the levels of haematopoietic cells (KDR+CD117+/CD133+ KDR+), could be used as a biomarker of the mortality risk over a period of 10 years in T2DM patients [105, 106].