Exploring the diabetic kidney proteome : A junction of tissue and serum

Sammanfattning: Diabetic kidney disease is one of the major complications associated with diabetes. Approximately 25-40% of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes patients will acquire a kidney complication and despite global efforts to reduce the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease, it is a leading cause of kidney failure in the western world. There are few treatment options directly targeting the kidney.The overall aim of this thesis was to dig past the current state of knowledge and delve deeper into the proteomic profile of diabetic kidney disease. By the use of discovery based and targeted mass spectrometry, the kidney proteomes of two diabetic mouse models reflecting type 1 and type 2 diabetes with early kidney disease were investigated and the serum proteomes of diabetes patients with various degrees of albuminuria were compared. In summary, the majority of the changes were seen for proteins with expression in the tubules, the reabsorbing organ in the kidneys and not in the glomeruli, which is the filtering unit. The findings in this thesis could imply that we need to re-think the target of kidney medication and the importance of tubuloglomerular feedback.