Biomedical Research

Since the goal of interventions for diabetic nephropathy is to prevent the progression of the disease, new early circulating biomolecules should be identified to be used as an early diagnostic tool instead of “markers” of nephropathy in diabetes patients. Hence, it would be essential to identify the earliest possible biomolecules which could serve as an early predictor for hyperglycemia induced nephropathy. Reports have showed association of elevated CYP2E1 gene expression and protein level in peripheral lymphocytes with prolonged diabetes and chronic renal failure. Our objectives were to evaluate the correlation of lymphocyte CYP2E1 in diabetic nephropathy and to identify other early peripheral biomolecules correlating with the onset of diabetic nephropathy. This is a cross-sectional cohort study, conducted on Malaysian subjects, consisted of control (C; n=28), type 2 diabetes (D; n=50), diabetic nephropathy (DN; n=34) and nondiabetic nephropathy (NDN; n=27) cohorts. Expression of CYP2E1 gene was evaluated using real-time PCR. Peripheral biomolecules correlating with onset of DN was investigated using microarray analysis. Differential and correlation statistics were done using ANOVA on ranks test and Spearman Rank Order Correlation test respectively. P-values < 0.05 were considered significant. Lymphocyte CYP2E1 levels correlated significantly with the increments of ACR and serum creatinine, and were detectable even when ACR and serum creatinine were still within normal reference limits. Further investigations are needed to determine the applicability of CYP2E1 as well as PGK1, GPI, ENO1, TPI1, ANGPTL4, AKR1B1 and SORD as candidate early risk predictors for diabetic nephropathy.

Author(s): Christina G. Y., Zaini A., Othman I.
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