NEK7 and type 2 diabetes mellitus: In accordance with the literature, T2DM patients exhibit reduced levels of miR-23a-3p in adipose tissue (Lozano-Bartolomé et al., 2018), blood (Chang et al., 2021) and blood serum (Yang et al., 2014), leading to tumor necrosis factor (TNFα)-induced insulin resistance (Lozano-Bartolomé et al., 2018) and overexpression of its target NIMA-related kinase 7 (NEK7) in macrophages, and consequently, NLRP3-induced inflammation (Chang et al., 2021).