We investigated the changes of renal structure and its function in normal glucose tolerance (NGT), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), diabetes mellitus (DM), and diabetic kidney disease (DKD) stages in OLETF rats and explored the role of the INS/IRS-1/PI3-K/Akt signaling pathway.
We studied plasma renin, prorenin, and four polymorphic markers of the renin gene in 199 patients with IDDM and DN, and in 192 normoalbuminuric IDDM controls matched for age, sex, and duration of diabetes.
The insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) gene has been reported to be associated with diabetic nephropathy in IDDM.
In the following review, we examine the available clinical, epidemiologic and family studies to assess the relationship between the development of hypertension and diabetic nephropathy in IDDM and NIDDM.
In conclusion, familial predisposition to essential hypertension increases the risk of diabetic nephropathy and may also contribute to the development of systemic hypertension in patients with IDDM and diabetic nephropathy.
IDDM subjects were divided into 2 groups according to the presence or absence of diabetic nephropathy (with nephropathy: n = 31, without nephropathy: n = 28).