The findings of a recent study identified novel genes linked with diabetic kidney disease (DKD) that leads to kidney failure. The result of this study was published in the journal, Diabetologia
Diabetic kidney disease is a decrease in the functioning of the kidneys that occurs in some people with diabetes. As a result of this, waste products and excess fluid are not eliminated from the body.
The study involved performing meta-analysis of previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on DKD. GWAS stands for genome wide association studies which is an observational study of genome-wide set of genetic variations in individuals to study how a gene variant is associated with a particular trait. For this, nearly 27,000 individuals suffering from diabetes kidney disease were included in the study.
Based on the results obtained, it was found that a novel intronic variant, found in the TENM2 gene was responsible for lower risk of having both chronic kidney disease and DKD. There were ten genes identified which were found to be associated with DKD.
Source: Sandholm N, Cole JB, Nair V, Sheng X, Liu H, Ahlqvist E, van Zuydam N, Dahlström EH, Fermin D, Smyth LJ, Salem RM, Forsblom C, Valo E, Harjutsalo V, Brennan EP, McKay GJ, Andrews D, Doyle R, Looker HC, Nelson RG, Palmer C, McKnight AJ, Godson C, Maxwell AP, Groop L, McCarthy MI, Kretzler M, Susztak K, Hirschhorn JN, Florez JC, Groop PH; GENIE Consortium. Genome-wide meta-analysis and omics integration identifies novel genes associated with diabetic kidney disease. Diabetologia. 2022 Sep;65(9):1495-1509. doi: 10.1007/s00125-022-05735-0. Epub 2022 Jun 28. PMID: 35763030; PMCID: PMC9345823.
