It was planned in this work to clarify the role of endothelin and nitric oxide as markers of endothelium, which is a gate of vascular complications in diabetes mellitus. In order to achieve this goal, this study was carried out on 75 subjects, 60 of them were diabetic patients, classified into 2 groups. Group I consisted of 35 noninsulin dependent diabetics with mean age of 50.24±17.29 years including 18 males and 17 females. Group II consisted of 25 insulin dependent diabetics with mean age of 37.73±13J5 years including 14 males and 11 females. The rest 15 subjects were well cross-matched apparently healthy volunteers with mean age of 45.13±10.52 including 9 males and 6 females as a control group or group III. All subjects under study were subjected to a thorough history and clinical examination. Also, all subjects under study were sUbjected to laboratory investigations including fasting and 2-hours postprandial plasma glucose, glycated hemoglobin, urine analysis for microalbumin, serum creatinine level, lipid pattern including total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDLcholesterol and LDL-cholesterol, plasma level of endothelin and plasma level of nitric oxide. According to the results obtained from this study it was found that: there was a significant increase of plasma levels of endothelin and decrease of plasma level of nitric oxide in diabetic patients when compared to the control group. The changes in endothelin and nitric acid levels in diabetic patients were more obvious in the poor controlled diabetic patients. There was no significant difference in plasma level of endothelin and nitric acid between insulin-dependent and non-insulin dependent diabetic patients. The clinical complications (as retinopathy, hypertension, nephropathy and peripheral neuritis) became more sever with the increase in endothelin level and with the decrease in nitric oxide level. |
