The Predictive Value of Sidestream Dark Field Imaging in Diabetic Nephropathy

Diabetic microangiopathy refers to the pathological changes of arterioles, capillaries and venules in diabetic patients. Due to the impacts including glycol-metabolism disorder, disturbance of lipid metabolism, cytokine, oxidative stress and hemodynamic changes, the structure and function of microvessels are damaged accordingly. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most common and serious chronic microvascular complications of diabetes, and becomes a leading cause of end-stage renal failure(ESRF). Presently, urinary albumin/creatinine ratio (UACR) is a widely accepted and relatively reliable indicator for early diagnosis of DN, however, there are 2/3 DN patients with normal albuminuria have decreased glomerular filtration rate (glomerular filtration rate, GFR) and abnormal structure of the kidney, one the other hand, the presence of albuminuria is associated with other vascular dysfunction and kidney disease other than DN, therefore its accuracy is increasingly being challenged.

Sidestream dark field(SDF) imagining technology, as an emerging way to visualize blood vessels, is evaluated in a semi-quantitative manner and provides an effective means to study structure and function of microcirculation. Different from biochemical markers like albuminuria, SDF provides a visual information about vessel structure, density, and quality of diffusion. At present the research of sublingual microcirculation by SDF technique is mainly applied to microcirculation monitoring in patients in the intensive care unit or laboratory animal models with acute hemorrhagic shock to assess the potential of being a tool of diagnosis and treatment prognostic indicator, no relevant research has been carried out to evaluate the predictive value of diabetic microangiopathy in literature so far.

Herein, the investigators designed the study based on SDF imaging to collect scientific data, thus providing strong support for the early assessment and diagnosis of diabetic nephropathy and possibly guiding individual therapy in the future.