Neutrophil -Lymphocyte ratio is a predictive marker for early stage diabetic nephropathy.

Background: The development of diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a key factor in the progression of diabetes mellitus to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). It begins and advances mostly due to chronic systemic inflammation. One affordable and easily accessible hematological marker that represents systemic inflammatory state and may be an early sign of renal impairment in diabetic patients is the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR). Methods: A total of ninety diabetic patients from Egypt's Minia University Hospital participated in this cross-sectional research. The three categories that participants were placed into were normoalbuminuria (300 mg/g) according to the urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (A/C). The following clinical and laboratory parameters were examined using SPSS version 26: HbA1c, serum creatinine, C-reactive protein (CRP), and NLR. Results: With a p-value less than 0.001, the mean NLR levels substantially rose as the severity of nephropathy increased (1.6 ± 0.5, 2.39 ± 0.52, and 2.95 ± 0.34). Several variables, including urine A/C ratio, serum creatinine, C-reactive protein, and diabetes duration, were positively correlated with NLR (r = 0.74, p < 0.001), r = 0.46, p = 0.01, and r = 0.61, p < 0.001, respectively. A significant independent predictor of DN was NLR, which was determined using multivariate regression (β = 0.45, p < 0.001). Conclusion:NLR is a simple, cost-effective, and reliable inflammatory biomarker that correlates substantially with renal impairment and disease progression in diabetes patientsRoutine NLR evaluation may assist early identification of individuals at risk of diabetic nephropathy and permit appropriate treatment intervention.