Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia and followed by vascular complications.Vascular complications are the main chronic diabetic complications and the major causes of mortality and disability in patients with diabetes mellitus.Macroangiopathy and microangiopathy are two main groups of diabetic vascular complications.There are two tissue-specific paradoxical changes in the angiogenesis in diabetic vascular complications: an excessive uncontrolled formation of premature blood vessels in some tissues and a deficiency in the formation of blood vessels in some other tissues.Diabetic vascular complications,such as diabetic nephropathy,diabetic retinopathy,diabetic neuropathy,accelerated atherosclerosis and impaired wound healing,are implicated with a large number of pathological variation on vessels.At the same time,evidence indicates that in nephropathy,retinopathy and atherosclerotic plaque,there is excessive angiogenesis,whereas in wound healing and myocardial perfusion,angiogenesis is impaired.The major cause of diabetes-related mortality is the complications involving aberrant angiogenesis.Angiogenesis is a key pathological characteristic of diabetic vascular complications.In addition,such as oxidative stress,inflammation,hormone imbalance,hyperglycaemia as well as abnormal expression of angiogenic factors that actually modulate angiogenesis are broadly observed in diabetes.Taking into account the increasing prevalence of diabetes worldwide,elucidating the angiogenic pathways that play a pivotal role in diabetes and diabetic vascular complications may be of great interest in order to design novel therapeutic approaches against this major public health challenge.