Non-Diabetic Nephropathies among Diabetic Patients of the Nephrology Department of Dakar

Abstract

Introduction: Diabetic nephropathy is the most common cause of kidney disease in diabetics. However, in some cases the clinical symptoms is not typical and nephropathy may be different from diabetic and require the use of renal biopsy (RB) which is not usually indicated unless non-diabetic nephropathy (NND) is suspected. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of non-diabetic nephropathy (NDN) among the diabetic patients and to analyse the different predictive factors of its occurrence. Patients and methods: It was a retrospective, descriptive and analytical study which is carried out at the nephrology department of Aristide Le DANTEC hospital of Dakar over a period of 60 months. Diabetics with suspected NDN diagnosis based on renal anomalie that is associated with a recent diabetes, Acute renal failure with rapid progress, Diabetic retinopathy’s absence, and Extrarenal signs (cutaneous, digestive and articular) associated with an acute renal failure. Microscopic haematuria was included. The epidemiological, clinical, biological and histological parameters were collected and analysed using the SPSS, 3.5 version software. Results: Out of 34 biopsied diabetic patients, 12 had NDN that is a prevalence of 35, 3%. The average age was 49.88 ± 4.15 years, 0.78 for the sex-ratio and the mean duration of diabetes is 12.53 ± 4.7 years. Glomerular syndrome was found in 30 patients (88.23%), vascular nephropathy syndrome in 3 patients (8.82%) and tubule-interstitial nephropathy syndrome in only one patient (2.94%). Diabetic retinopathy (DR) and microscopic haematuria (HU) respectively existed in 10 patients (34%) and 15 patients (44. 12%). The Kidney biopsy (KB) indications were renal abnormalities associated with recent diabetes, acute renal failure with rapid progress, absence of DR, extrarenal signs associated with acute renal failure and microscopic haematuria. Twenty-two patients (64.7%) had diabetic nephropathy (DN) and 12 patients (38.2%) presented a NDN. Predictive factors of NDN diagnosis were a shorter diabetes duration (P = 0.0008), high blood pressure (P = 0.0015) and absence of DR (P = 0.005). Conclusion: Our data show that kidney injury in a diabetic is not always diabetic nephropathy. The Kidney biopsy (KB) is often needed in order to adopt an effective management.