The Role of Urinary Cyclophilin A as a New Marker for Diabetic Nephropathy

Abstract

ype 2 diabetes mellitus is the most common single cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), where diabetic nephropathy is considered the cause in almost half of all patients with ESRD. Despite the availability of many modern therapies for glycemic control, there are no specific curative treatments yet for DN and many diabetic patients still progressed to severe renal damage. Currently, albuminuria is the most commonly used marker to predict onset and progression of DN clinically. However, this traditional marker for DN lacks both sensitivity and specificity to detect early stage of DN. Furthermore there is a lack of a strong association between albuminuria and glomerular filtration rate (GFR). As such, it is crucial to find earlier and reliable markers for DN diagnosis and intervention providing an opportunity to stop the permanent damage caused by it. This study focuses on Cyclophilin A (CypA) in urine. Cyp A is a protein with various characteristics, mostly distributed in the cytoplasm and facilitates protein folding and protein trafficking. It has relatively high expression level in normal kidneys. Our study was conducted on 90 subjects of comparative age and sex. GI included 30 healthy control subjects, GII included 30 T2DM patients with normoalbuminuria (Albu