Microalbuminuria as an indicator of kidney damage in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Introduction: diabetic nephropathy is considered one of the most serious complications in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and one of the main causes of end-stage renal failure. It is considered that between 20 % and 40 % of people with diabetes mellitus present some degree of nephropathy during their evolution and one of the first indicators of diabetic nephropathy is microalbuminuria, which are small amounts of albumin that are present in the urine. Methods: it is a bibliographic review study of the literature found between 2017 and 2023 in which databases such as Google Scholar, Scielo, Pubmed, Elsevier related to studies of microalbuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, and suspicion of kidney damage were obtained. Results: a total of 35 scientific articles were analyzed where it was determined that, currently, the early determination of microalbuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus plays a very important role since this analysis is specifically related to kidney disease. Conclusions: it will continue that the value of microalbuminuria is the most appropriate method to identify patients who could present diabetic nephropathy, for which there are semiquantitative tests such as the micral-test, and quantitative tests, among which are ichroma™ Microalbumin, microalbumin-turbilatex, which allow the exact amount of this analyte to be calculated.