Diabetic Nephropathy

Diabetic Nephropathy - DiaPat®-DN test

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a chronic kidney disease that develops as a result of diabetes mellitus. DN is often characterized by a slow, progressive loss of renal function, with a loss of glomerular filtration over a period of months or years that eventually leads to end-stage renal disease requiring renal replacement therapy (dialysis or kidney transplantation). About 25% to 40% of the patients with diabetes will develop diabetic nephropathy.

Diabetic nephropathy is generally detected by measurements of albumin in urine or changes in serum creatinine concentration in blood. However, these methods are late manifestations of renal damage.

Analysing the urine proteome, the DiaPat®-DN test allows the detection of diabetic nephropathy 3-5 years prior to the occurrence of clinical symptoms. An accuracy of approximately 94% was revealed in clinical trials.
Patients can highly benefit from this early detection as appropriate therapy enables preventing or delaying onset of diabetic nephropathy and subsequently end-stage renal disease and dialysis.

 

Advantages of the DiaPat®-DN test

• Painless (from urine)
• Riskless sampling
• Reliable (highly reliable detection of DN)
• Long-term monitoring (therapy success and individually adapted treatment)

Risk factors for diabetic nephropathy:

• diabetes
• high blood pressure (arterial hypertension)
• aging
• family history

 

Figure: Adoption of the DiaPat®-DN test (diabetic nephropathy) (Zoom in)

 

References:

Mischak H, Kaiser T, Walden M et al.
Proteomic analysis for the assessment of diabetic renal damage in humans.
Clin Sci (Lond) 2004; 107: 485-495

Meier M, Kaiser T, Herrmann A et al.
Identification of urinary protein pattern in type 1 diabetic adolescents with early diabetic nephropathy by a novel combined proteome analysis.
J Diabetes Complications 2005; 19: 223-232

Rossing K, Mischak H, Rossing P, Schanstra JP, Wiseman A, Maahs DM.
The urinary proteome in diabetes and diabetes-associated complications: new ways to assess disease progression and evaluate therapy.
Proteomics Clin Appl 2008; 2: 997-1007

Rossing K, Mischak H, Dakna M et al.
Urinary Proteomics in Diabetes and CKD.
J Am Soc Nephrol 2008; 19: 1283-1290

Snell-Bergeon JK, Maahs DM, Ogden LG et al.
Evaluation of urinary biomarkers for coronary artery disease, diabetes, and diabetic kidney disease.
Diabetes Technol Ther 2009; 11: 1-9

 

Background information

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a serious and common complication of diabetes and an important cause of mortality in diabetics.

The most common causes of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in North America, Europe, and Japan are diabetic nephropathy, hypertension, and glomerulonephritis (inflammation of the glomeruli, or small blood vessels in the kidneys). Approximately 75% of all adult cases of end-stage renal disease suffer from one of these three diseases.

At present about 250 million people worldwide have diabetes and the number is expected to double within the next 20 years mainly due to an epidemic increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Since 25% to 40% of all diabetic patients will develop diabetic nephropathy, it has become the leading cause of end-stage renal disease in the Western world. Therefore, the early identification and subsequent end-organ protective treatment of all patients at risk for end-stage renal disease is of outmost importance.