A collaborative study conducted by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre and the University of Heidelberg researchers, has lead to the identification of a gene which protects some diabetics from developing severe kidney failure or ?end-stage renal disease?.
Published in online edition of Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, the study shows that the carnosinase 1 gene, located on human chromosome 18, protects some of the patients with diabetes against the end-stage kidney disease that requires either kidney dialysis treatments or a kidney transplant for survival.
“This is a major gene that appears to be associated with development of severe diabetic kidney disease,” said Dr. Barry I. Freedman, the John H. Felts III Professor and head of the Section on Nephrology.
The researchers evaluated 858 subjects, including diabetic patients with end-stage kidney failure on dialysis, diabetic patients with normal kidney function, and healthy non-diabetic individuals. They confirmed that a protective form of the carnosinase 1 gene was present in greater frequency among both healthy individuals and diabetic subjects without kidney disease, compared to the diabetic patients on dialysis who more commonly had forms of the gene that were not protective.