OBJECTIVE -Recent studies have proved that blockade of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) retards the progression of diabetic nephropathy, whereas hyporeninemia is known as a typical state in diabetic subjects. The purpose of this study is to determine whether expression levels of RAS differ between nondiabetic and diabetic renal tissues with accurate quantitative method.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS -Subjects were 66 nondiabetic and 8 diabetic patients with biopsy-proven renal diseases. The eight diabetic subjects suffered from type 2 diabetes with overt proteinuria. Renal histology revealed typical diffuse or nodular lesions with linear IgG deposit on immunofluorescent staining and thickened basement membrane on electronic microscopy. Total RNA from a small part of the renal cortical biopsy specimens was reverse-transcribed, and the resultant cDNA was amplified for new major components of RAS (i.e., renin, renin receptor, angiotensinogen, ACE, ACE2, angiotensin II type 1 receptor, and angiotensin II type 2 receptor) and measured.RESULTS -Among these components, a significant upregulation was observed in the ACE gene in diabetic renal tissue.CONCLUSIONS -The results suggest that renal tissue RAS might be activated in the respect that ACE gene expression is upregulated in spite of a tendency to low renin expression in type 2 diabetic nephropathy.
Diabetes Care 29:848 -852, 2006R ecently proposed mechanisms for the development of diabetic nephropathy include glomerular hyperfiltration (1), disorientation of intracellular signal transduction (2), and involvement of advanced glycation end products (3). Activation of the reninangiotensin system (RAS) by high glucose, mechanical stress, and proteinuria has been implicated in the major changes associated with diabetic nephropathy (4). Thus, renal tissue activation of RAS is thought to contribute to deterioration in renal function of diabetic nephropathy. Recently, a number of large-scale prospective studies have proven that blockade of the system with ACE inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) retards the progression of diabetic nephropathy (5-11). Actually, several studies suggest that the RAS is activated especially at the early stage (12,13). However, from early studies, hyporeninemia has been well known as a typical state of circulatory RAS in diabetic subjects at the late stage (14,15). Although the tissue RAS is thought to be controlled independently of the circulatory RAS, this apparent paradox is still difficult to interpret. It is supposed that the tissue RAS is activated in contrast to the circulatory RAS, and several non-or semiquantitative evaluations were made. However, direct or quantitative evidence in human diabetic nephropathy is very scarce so far. Furthermore, new major components for RAS, renin receptor (RER) (16), and ACE2 (17) have emerged recently.The purpose of this study is to determine whether expression levels of RAS including RER and ACE2 differ between nondiabetic and diabetic human renal tissues with full quantitative evalua...