In a paper published today in Science Translational Medicine , researchers from City of Hope ® , one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States and a leading research center for diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses, report that they have discovered advances in predicting kidney failure in type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients. By performing the first epigenome-wide association analysis in patients with diabetic kidney disease, a team led by Rama Natarajan, Ph.D.
, deputy director of the Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute at City of Hope, identified novel associations between DNA methylation activity -; a biological process that can change the activity of a DNA segment -; and a subsequent risk of developing kidney failure in a number of years. T1D, which affects an estimated 9 million people worldwide, is associated with a significantly increased risk for kidney disease, which can progress to kidney failure. Failure of the kidneys requires dialysis or renal transplantation and results in higher rates of illness and death for T1D patients.
"It is therefore critical to find mechanisms leading to kidney failure in diabetes, as well as biomarkers of early detection to facilitate prompt intervention," said Natarajan, who is a corresponding author on the paper and a pioneer in diabetes epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and the environment can cause reversible changes to gene expression and activity withou.