CASE REPORT article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Clinical Diabetes
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1623272
This article is part of the Research TopicHighlights in Diabetes NephropathyView all 16 articles
Diabetic nephropathy with minimal change disease：A case report
Provisionally accepted
- 1Tianjin Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Affiliated Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 2Tianjin University of Traditional CHinese Medicine, Tianjin, China
- 3First Affiliated Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China
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Keywor ds：Diabetes nephropathy, Podocytosis, Case report Background:Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) has become the main cause of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) in the past decade. Diabetes kidney disease (DKD) is one of the most serious complications of diabetes. In clinical practice, the diagnosis of DKD is based primarily on clinical criteria, that is, almost do not undergo renal biopsy, which leading to many non-diabetic kidney diseases (NDKD) being misdiagnosed as DKD, thus increasing the incidence rate of DKD. The incidence of NDKD is also higher in those with DM. To date, few cases of minimal change disease (MCD) among those with DKD have been reported. Here, we report a case of diabetes nephropathy with pathological diagnosis, which was considered to be complicated with MCD according to the medical history, and was completely relieved after glucocorticoid treatment.Case description: A 49-year-old male patient with a diabetes duration of 3 years was admitted to the our hospital mainly because of "bilateral lower extremity edema for 1 month". The clinical manifestations were nephrotic syndrome and diabetic nephrolopathy were confirmed by renal biopsy. According to the medical history, DKD with MCD was considered. The patient received glucocorticoid for six months and getting completely relieved of proteinuria.Conclusion: Renal biopsy is helpful to differentiate diabetes with CKD. DKD and DKD with minimal change disease can be differentiated in the early stage of DKD, but are difficult to be differentiated in late stage of DKD. In clinical practice, for such patients, we should also diagnose them carefully based on their medical history to reduce the misdiagnosis rate.
Keywords: Diabetes Mellitus, Diabetic kidney disease, minimal change disease, diabetic kidney disease combined with MCD, case report
Received: 05 May 2025; Accepted: 25 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Miao, Mo, Zhang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Pengwei Miao, Tianjin Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Affiliated Hospital, Tianjin, China
Mianzhi Zhang, Tianjin Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Affiliated Hospital, Tianjin, China
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