Study on Changes in the Microcirculation Highlighted with Capillaroscopy in Patients with Diabetic Nephropathy: Preliminary Data

Abstract

Background and Aims: Nailfold-Videocapillaroscopy (NCV) is a non-invasive diagnostic tool of now proven efficacy in the evaluation of the microcirculation alterations characterizing various connective tissue diseases and also other several systemic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a microvascular complication of diabetes. To our knowledge, a few researches have been conducted to investigate the relationship between DN and NVC. We evaluated nailfold capillaries (NC) in type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM) patients(pts) to determine any correlation between the development of nephropathy and changes in NC.

Materials and Methods: We underwent NCV 30 pts (18M and 12F) affected by T2DM and a control group of 28 healthy individuals (16M and 12F). T2DM pts were separated into groups of normoalbuminuric, microalbuminuric and macroalbuminuric DN stages according to the albumin/creatinine ratio. GFR was evaluated using the CKD-EPI formula. We used Videocap 3.0, 200x magnification and software (DS Medica, Italy).