Incidence of diabetic nephropathy in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Diabetic nephropathy is a progressive kidney disease caused by angiopathy of capillaries in the kidney glomeruli. This study was designed to find out the frequency of occurrence of renal complications in diabetic patients. This was achieved by examining for the presence of microalbuminuria using Albumin Creatinine Ratio (ACR) in a spot urine. A total of 95 asymptomatic diabetic patients and 19 non-diabetic controls were used for the study. These patients were grouped into two: those with analbuminuria and others with microalbuminuria using the ACR = 30 mg g-1, which approximates 24 h urinary albumin excretion in mg. Results obtained showed mean significant increases in the ACR in the diabetic group (48.58±4.14 mg-1) when compared to the control (22.76±5.14mg g-1 p<0.05). There were also mean significant increases in ACR (48.58±4.14 mg g-1; p<0.05) with increase in glycosylated haemoglobin (5.90±0.26%; control: 3.72±0.13%) as well as with duration of diabetes (4.17±0.63 years) amongst the diabetic patients. Our analysis thus, indicated that there was a significantly higher ACR (54.09±8.87 mg g-1 p<0.05) in men than in women (45.65±4.24 mg g-1). The study also showed that the incidence of nephropathy amongst diabetics in Southern Nigeria is 72.63%.