Correlation between neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and proteinuria in diabetes

Introduction: To study the relationship between Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and proteinuria in diabetes. Materials and Method: This was a cross sectional study 196 diabetic subjects. They were divided into no nephropathy, incipient nephropathy and overt nephropathy. The Neutrophil lymphocyte ratio was compared between the three groups using Mann Whitney U test. Pearsons correlation was used to compare the other parameters between the three groups. Results: There was significant difference between the median Neutrophil lymphocyte ratios in the three groups. The median NLR in patients with ‘no nephropathy’ was 2.69 (1.64-2.53). In patients with ‘incipient nephropathy’ was 2.77 (1.81-4.65). In patients with ‘overt nephropathy’ was 3.77 (2.01-5.39). A value of 2.752 of NLR can be taken as a cut off for predicting Overt Nephropathy with 74% sensitivity and 50% specificity. Conclusion: Being a commonly available and cheap test, NLR can be advocated as a useful screening test in diabetics to predict the development or presence of diabetic nephropathy.