Diabetes is associated with significantly increased rates of kidney disease or diabetic
nephropathy (DN), a severe microvascular complication that can lead to end-stage renal
disease. End-stage renal disease needs to be treated by dialysis or kidney transplantation
and also is associated with cardiovascular disease and macrovascular complications.
Therefore, effective renal protection is critical to reduce the rates of mortality associated with
diabetes. Although key signal transduction and gene regulation mechanisms have been …