2018 Volume 2 Issue 1 Pages 45-52
The renal complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus is diagnosed as the diabetic nephropathy. Its pathophysiology has not yet been fully clarified, however. Although a concept of diabetic kidney disease has recently been proposed, the background of its pathophysiology is limited to type 2 diabetes and definite pathophysiological features are difficult to indicate. Under these conditions, we propose metabolic syndrome nephropathy (combined renal microangiopathy and intrarenal arteriosclerosis), taking account of the metabolic syndrome which plays an important role in the development of type 2 diabetes. This article is a report of our early-diagnosis method established for such nephropathy.
The new diagnostic method (using vascular resistance measurement by renal ultrasound imaging and estimated renal blood flow measurement with a contrast agent for ultrasound imaging), as compared with the conventional method (using albuminuria detection and estimated glomerular filtration rate measurement), showed a marked increase of diagnostic rate (89.4% vs. 51.3%). This new method, if applicable in the early-diagnosis of renal damage, will hold promise in providing a clue for preventing the end-stage renal failure.
