Lumican Identified as Key Extracellular Matrix-Related Biomarker in Diabetic Nephropathy Through Integrated Bioinformatics Analysis

This study highlights lumican as a promising biomarker for predicting the onset and progression of diabetic nephropathy and reveals its close association with extracellular matrix remodeling, a hallmark of diabetic kidney disease. The findings offer new perspectives for the clinical diagnosis and targeted treatment of diabetic nephropathy, potentially improving patient outcomes.

Using computational bioinformatics techniques, potential biomarkers for diabetic nephropathy were identified, with a particular emphasis on the key gene lumican and its involvement in disease-related molecular mechanisms.

Publicly accessible microarray datasets, GSE96804 and GSE30528, from the Gene Expression Omnibus database were analyzed to detect genes that were differentially expressed between diabetic nephropathy patients and healthy controls. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis and Gene Set EnrichmentAnalysis based on the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database revealed that these differentially expressed genes were significantly involved in biological processes such as the cellular response to hexose and organization of cell–cell junctions, as well as pathways related to amino acid metabolism and adipokine signaling.