Abstract
Due to their prevalence, diabetes and its complications continue to pose a significant challenge in modern medicine. It is particularly important to identify and develop new biomarkers that would enable faster and more effective detection of specific diseases, including the most common complication of diabetes-diabetic kidney disease (DKD). This review presents the current knowledge on two proteins-fetuin-A and heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1)-whose biological functions and involvement in the pathophysiology of the discussed disease make them potentially useful biomarkers. Moreover, there are studies indicating an association of polymorphisms in the genes encoding fetuin-A and HO-1 with the risk of developing diabetes or DKD. Based on the available literature, both proteins appear promising for use in the diagnosis of diabetes and its complications or assessing the risk of these diseases. However, this requires confirmation in large-scale studies and the development and standardization of detection methods.