Role of serum pentraxin-3 levels in patients with and without diabetic nephropathy

Several studies have reported that increased pentraxin-3 (PTX3) levels are associated with impaired renal function in chronic kidney disease (CKD). PTX3 levels increase progressively with diabetic nephropathy (DN) and may be a biomarker for early diagnosis of DN.

The study evaluates serum PTX3 levels and their association with the development of DN. We also aim to find out whether serum PTX3 is a better marker than high-sensitive CRP (hs-CRP) for DN.

In this study, we evaluated serum PTX3 levels in 150 patients which were distributed into three groups that are 50 patients with DN, 50 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) without DN and 50 controls (not any evidence of DM). DN patients were subdivided: 32 patients with microalbuminuria and 18 patients with macroalbuminuria. Serum PTX3 levels were evaluated using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit.

DN group patients had a higher value of PTX3 (p < 0.001) as compared to DM without DN and control groups. hs-CRP levels were higher in DM without DN patients compared to DN patients and controls. PTX3 (p = 0.33) and hs-CRP (p = 0.10) levels among microalbuminuria and macroalbuminuria patients were statistically not significant.

This study concludes that serum PTX3 can be used as a diagnostic marker for DN before the development of apparent chronic kidney disease and PTX3 was found to be a better marker than hs-CRP for diagnosing DN.