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Because of the high prevalence of diabetes mellitus, many people are diagnosed with kidney disease every year, which causes symptoms such as edema, proteinuria, elevated blood pressure, and even uremia caused by renal failure, which requires life-long dialysis or kidney transplantation to sustain life. Generally speaking, about one third of diabetics have end-stage diabetic nephropathy and need dialysis treatment.

The kidneys are like a special tap water system, connected by numerous small blood vessels to many glomeruli, which are like water filters to retain some useful nutrients flowing through the glomeruli, while filtering out useless waste or excess substances from the body.

The early stage of diabetic nephropathy mainly occurs in the small vessels of the glomeruli. Some tiny proteins in blood leak into urine. When they develop to a later stage, the kidneys cannot clean up harmful substances in blood, such as urea nitrogen and creatinine, which causes the rise of urea nitrogen and creatinine in blood. A rise in creatinine is an indicator of markedly worse kidney function.

Hypertension is also one of the main triggers of diabetic nephropathy. If the patient has hypertension but does not control his blood pressure properly, it will increase the risk of nephropathy and accelerate the development of diabetic nephropathy. High blood pressure can lead to nephropathy. On the other hand, when kidney function deteriorates, it will also increase blood pressure. Therefore, diabetics should always measure their blood pressure by themselves and should be treated even mild hypertension.