Aquaporin 11 variant associates with kidney disease in type 2 diabetic patients.

Kidney disease, a common complication of diabetes, associates with poor prognosis. Our previous animal model studies linked aquaporin (AQP)11 to acute kidney injury, hyperglycemia-induced renal impairment, and kidney disease in diabetes. Here, we report the AQP11 rs2276415 variant as a genetic factor placing type 2 diabetic patients at greater risk for the development of kidney disease. We performed two independent retrospective case-control studies in 1,075 diabetic and 1,619 nondiabetic individuals who were identified in the Synthetic Derivative Database with DNA samples in the BioVU DNA repository at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN). A χ2-test and multivariable logistic regression analysis with adjustments for age, sex, baseline serum creatinine, and underlying comorbid disease covariates showed a significant association between rs2276415 and the prevalence of any event of acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease (CKD) in diabetic patients but not in patients without diabetes. This result wa...