Nephrotic range proteinuria; does it predict lung involvement in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder that is well known for its long term serious complications. Proteinuria whether micro or macroproteinuria is one of these complications. Many studies has related proteinuria to other complications of diabetes as retinopathy and cardiovascular disease of diabetes, while the lungs of diabetic patients which is the largest organ in the body with a large macro and microvascular bed, has not been related to this complication.

Aim: The aim of the study was to find out whether proteinuria in diabetic patients can predict lung involvement.

Patients And Methods: A comparative cross sectional study in which we compared the lung function of 100 type 2 diabetic patients with proteinuria with that of 100 type 2 diabetic patients without proteinuria. Proteinuria is measured in a random sample by "urine protein/urine creatinine ratio". FEV1 and FVC were measured by spirometer.

Results: The results showed that patients with proteinuria had a high frequency of abnormal PFT (86%), while patients without proteinuria had a low frequency of abnormal PFT (11%).Also diabetic patients with proteinuria had lower FVC (72.9 ± 6.5 vs. 88.2 ± 8.2), than diabetic patients without proteinuria.

Conclusions: We concluded that diabetes mellitus causes a significant impairment in pulmonary function test. This impairment is significantly related with proteinuria.