Abstract

Introduction Diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease that usually causes disrupts the function of the body's organs and can eventually lead to cardiomyopathy, nephropathy, retinopathy, and neuropathy. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the most common cause of chronic kidney disease and causes chronic structural changes in different parts of the affected kidney. Glycocalyx layer is one of the most important components of the vascular base found in the endothelium throughout the body's arteries and it has been shown that glycocalyx is also damaged during diabetic nephropathy. Our goal is to conduct this systematic review study is to find the cause-and-effect relationship between glycocalyx and diabetic nephropathy and also to clarify the role of the endothelial renal glycocalyx in understanding of mechanism of the course of diabetic nephropathy, and to provide an accurate background for further important studies. Methods All databases included MEDLINE (PubMed), Science Direct, Scopus, Ovid and Google Scholar were systematically searched for related published articles. In all databases, the following search strategy was implemented and these key words (in the title/abstract) were used: "diabetes" AND "glycocalyx" OR "diabetic nephropathy" AND "glycocalyx". Results and discussion A total of 19 articles were retrieved from all databases using search strategy. After screening based on the title and abstract, number of 17 of them selected for full text assessment. Finally, after extracting the key points and making connections between the articles, we came up with new points to consider. It can be said that diabetes with the action of reactive oxygen species through oxidative stress, increases ICAM-1 and TNF-alpha and decreases heparanase enzyme, it affects the glomerular endothelium and eventually leads to albuminuria and destruction of the Glx layer. Conclusion Diabetes causes super-structural changes in the kidney nephrons at the glomerular level. The glomerular filter barrier, which includes the epithelial cell called the podocyte, endothelial pore cells, and basal membrane of the glomerulus, plays a major role in stabilizing the selective glomerular function in healthy individuals. Diabetic nephropathy also causes changes in endothelial glycocalyx.