IL6 and diabetes mellitus: In diabetes, high glucose and proinflammatory cytokines can dramatically increase ROS levels, resulting in oxidative stress that damages DNA, proteins, and lipids.7 Our confocal imaging and flow cytometry analyses revealed significantly higher ROS production in DB-VOs treated with the diabetes-simulating stress (33 mM glucose, 1 ng/mL TNF-a, 1 ng/mL IL-6) for 21 days compared to ND-VOs (Figure 2A, 2B; median ratio = 1.81, P-value = .001).