How to Know if You Have Diabetic Nephropathy

With the life style changes, more and more people are diagnosed with Diabetes. Accordingly, the morbidity of Diabetic Nephropathy is rising year after year. At present, Diabetic Nephropathy is the leading cause of End Stage Renal Failure (ESRF). Therefore, it is very essential for the patients with Diabetes to know if they have kidney damage, especially for those with more than 5 years' history of Diabetes. The flowing article will introduce the signs of Diabetic Nephropathy.

1. Proteinuria

In the early stage of Diabetic Nephropathy, the patients occasionally have intermittent microalbumin, but the urine routine exam can not show any abnormality. If the patients have obvious proteinuria in the urine routine exams, it proves that they have developed into at least Stage 3 Diabetic Nephropathy. In severe case, the patients even have massive proteinuria.

2. Swelling

With the proteinuria appearing, some patients will have swelling. When the massive protein is filtered out into urine, the protein level in blood will deceases, it can cause blood plasma colloid osmotic pressure to decline. The fluid in blood will permeate into tissues leading to swelling. In severe case, they may experience ascetic fluid that can cause much burden to their kidneys and hearts.

3. Hypertension

Hypertension is an early symptom of Diabetic Nephropathy and can appear in stage 2 or 3. At first, the hypertension is intermittent and gradually develops into persistent hypertension. If uncontrolled in time, it will aggravate the excretion of proteinuria thus aggravating renal damage. Therefore, the patients with Diabetic Nephropathy should control their blood pressure within 130/80 mmHg.

4. Kidney damage

In the early stage of Diabetic Nephropathy, the renal function declines at a very slow speed. However, once the patients have persistent proteinuria, especially massive proteinuria, their renal function will aggravates sharply and may develop into End Stage Renal Failure (ESRF) in several years.

If the patients can receive effective treatment when they just have renal damage, it is possible for them to recover their normal renal function. However, once Diabetic Nephropathy progresses into stage 2 or 3, it is hard for them to reverse their renal function. Therefore, the patients with Diabetes should do checks like urine test, blood test, renal function test and urinary albumin regularly. In this way, they will be able to find if they have renal damage in the first time.

Therefore, the patients with Diabetes should do renal function examination, urine test and blood test regularly. If they have the above symptoms, they should receive treatment at once so as to preserve their renal function effectively.

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