Analysis of Urinary Podocalyxin as a Predictor Biomarker of Diabetic Nephropathy

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is the most common cause of diabetes, accounting for about 85% of cases. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a complication of diabetes mellitus which can end up as kidney failure. Podocalyxin (PDX) is a protein expressed in kidney podocytes that plays a role in maintaining the structure of the glomeruli. The research design was carried out using analytic observational method with a cross sectional design. The total samples were 25 T2DM subjects with DN and 25 T2DM subjects without DN obtained by purposive probability sampling technique. This research was conducted at the Endocrine Polyclinic, Clinical Pathology Laboratory, Hasanuddin University Medical Research Center (HUM-RC) Laboratory, Hasanuddin University Hospital, Makassar. T2DM subjects with and without DN were categorized based on Albumin/Creatinine Ratio (ACR) levels that measured by immunoturbidimetric method and urine podocalyxin levels measured by the Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay method. The results showed that the Area Under Curve of PDX validity was measured at 0.779 with a degree of confidence of 0.685-0.913 (p<0.05). The cut off point value was 0.175 ng/mL with a sensitivity of 66.7% and a specificity of 64.3%. It was concluded that PDX with a concentration value of 0.175 ng/mL could be used as a biomarker predictor of ND.