Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is undoubtedly a multifactoral disease, and a large proportion of patients affected with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes develop diabetic nephropathy and progress to end stage renal disease (ESRD). When poor prognostic factors such as hypertension and chronic hyperglycemia areaggressively treated, the rate of progression of diabetic nephropathy can be slowed. However, no interventions have been shown to reliably halt the progression of diabetic nephropathy. Numerous studies have suggested that genetic predisposition to diabetic nephropathy exists, but genes for nephropathy have not yet been isolated. It is anticipated that a comprehensive analysis of a large number of uniformly phenotyped ESRD familieswill be necessary to isolated genes for ESRD. Such a database of families may not be available at any single institution. The FIND study has established a centralized Genetic Analysis and Data Coordinating Center (GADCC) that, together with eight participating investigation centers (PICs), three minority recruitment centers, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), will use the emerging high-throughput genetic technologies to enable identification of diabetic nephropathy susceptibility or protection genes. The charge of the consortium is to acquire sets of families with well-characterized diabetic nephropathy, establish a secure master FIND database, and perform a genome scan to identify chromosomal regions linked with diabetic nephropathy.
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