Evaluation of the role of cytokine gene polymorphisms in diabetic nephropathy among Kuwaiti patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Prior studies on the role of inflammatory cytokines as biomarkers for DKD present conflicting results and it has not been conclusively determined which of these cytokines yields the best performance. In view of the clinical importance of predicting the development of DKD in T2DM patients, the present study was designed to compare the performance of some inflammatory cytokines, namely, IL-6, IL-10, IFN-γ and TNF-α, in predicting DKD in T2DM patients. Furthermore, despite several groups attempting to investigate the association of inflammatory cytokine genetic variants with susceptibility to DKD, the results remain inconsistent rather than conclusive. In an attempt to decrease the uncertainty of the association of inflammatory cytokine genetic variants with the development of DKD, and to provide more conclusive evidence regarding their clinical relevance, we explored the genotypes distribution of some SNPs in a Kuwaiti cohort of T2DM patients with or without DKD as well as in healthy subjects.