Construction of a prediction model for nephropathy among obese patients using genetic and clinical features

Abstract

Obesity is a complex disease arising from an excessive accumulation of body fat which leads to various complications such as diabetes, hypertension, and renal diseases. The growing prevalence of obesity is also becoming a major risk factor for nephropathy. When patients are diagnosed with nephropathy, their progression towards renal failure is usually inevitable. Therefore, a prediction tool will help medical doctors identify patients with a higher risk of developing nephropathy and implement early treatment or prevention. In this study, we attempted to construct a diagnostic support system for nephropathy using clinical and genetic traits. Our results show that prediction models involving the use of both genetic and clinical features yielded the best classification performance. Our finding is in accordance with the complex nature of obesity-related nephropathy and support the notion of using genetic traits to design a personalized diagnostic model.