Incidence and Predictors of Chronic Kidney Disease among Diabetes Mellitus Patients: A Retrospective Follow-Up Study at a Tertiary Health-Care Setting of Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the most common microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus (DM) and it is a major health burden worldwide. Despite the increasing trend of microvascular complications in developing countries, there is limited evidence on predictors of CKD among diabetic patients in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess the incidence and predictors of CKD among DM patients. METHODS: A retrospective follow-up study was conducted among type 1 and type 2 DM patients in Southwest Ethiopia. A total of 437 newly-diagnosed diabetes patients were selected using a simple random sampling technique. Data were extracted from patients’ medical records. Cox proportional hazard model was fitted and a 95% confidence interval was used to select significant variables. RESULTS: Overall, 15.56% of patients developed CKD, with an incidence rate of 2.29 per 1,000 person-month (PM) (95% CI=1.79–2.93). Female sex (AHR=0.51, 95% CI=0.27–0.94) was found to be a protective factor of CKD, while positive proteinuria (AHR=2.85, 95% CI=1.48–5.55), having hypertension (HTN) (AHR=2.31, 95% CI=1.03–5.56), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) <40 mg/dL (AHR=3.19, 95% CI=1.73–5.98) were significant predictors of CKD. CONCLUSION: CKD among DM patients continues to be a significant public health problem in health-care settings of Ethiopia. The current study found being female was protective, while positive proteinuria, HTN, and HDL-C <40 mg/dL were risk factors for CKD. We recommend health professionals to give more attention to DM patients with the identified risk factors.