Urinary 20-HETE: A prospective Non-Invasive prognostic and diagnostic marker for diabetic kidney disease

The identification and validation of a non-invasive prognostic marker for early detection of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) can lead to substantial improvement in therapeutic decision-making.

The main objective of this study is to assess the potential role of the arachidonic acid (AA) metabolite 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic (20-HETE) in predicting the incidence and progression of DKD.

Healthy patients and patients with diabetes were recruited from the Hamad General Hospital in Qatar, and urinary 20-HETE levels were measured. Data analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

Our results show that urinary 20-HETE-to-creatinine (20-HETE/Cr) ratios were significantly elevated in patients with DKD when compared to patients with diabetes who did not exhibit clinical signs of kidney injury (p < 0.001). This correlation was preserved in the multivariate linear regression accounting for age, diabetes, family history of kidney disease, hypertension, dyslipidemia, stroke and metabolic syndrome. Urinary 20-HETE/Cr ratios were also positively correlated with the severity of kidney injury as indicated by albuminuria levels (p < 0.001). A urinary 20-HETE/Cr ratio of 4.6 pmol/mg discriminated between the presence and absence of kidney disease with a sensitivity of 82.2 % and a specificity of 67.1%. More importantly, a 10-unit increase in urinary 20-HETE/Cr ratio was tied to a 10-fold increase in the risk of developing DKD, suggesting a 20-HETE prognostic efficiency.

Taken together, our results suggest that urinary 20-HETE levels can potentially be used as non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic markers for DKD.