Abstract:Objective To investigate the related factors of anemia in the patients with diabetic nephropathy (DN) diagnosed by renal biopsy. Methods In this retrospective study, 201 patients with DN diagnosed by renal biopsy were included. They were divided into an anemia group and a non-anemia group. The relationships of anemia with clinical manifestations, laboratory findings, pathological classification of DN and renal tubular injury scores were analyzed. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the related factors in the DN patients of different genders. Results In 201 cases with DN, diabetes duration (DD), eGFR, urinary albumin/creatinine (UACR), glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), albumin (ALB), triglyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), serum iron (SI), transferrin (TRF), hypersensitive C reactive protein (hs-CRP) and erythropoietin (EPO) were significantly different between the anemia group and the non-anemia group (P < 0.05). There were significant differences in DD, eGFR, UACR, HbA1c, ALB, TG, SI, TRF, hs-CRP, Scr, BUN and total iron binding rate between the anemia group and the non-anemia group of the male patients (P < 0.05); in the female cases, eGFR, ALB, HbA1c, UACR and hs-CRP were significantly different between the two groups (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that eGFR, ALB, DD and hs-CRP were related to anemia in the male patients (P < 0.05); while ALB and hs-CRP were correlated with anemia in the female patients (P < 0.05). The tubulointerstitial damage score in the anemia group was significantly higher than that in the non-anemia group (P < 0.05), and the significant difference in the Hb level between the patients in pathological stage IIa and those in other stages was also detected (P < 0.05). Conclusions The related factors of anemia in DN patients include duration of diabetes, renal function deterioration, disorder of iron metabolism, microinflammation and so on. Tubulointerstitial damage might be an important mechanism of renal function deterioration-associated anemia.