The NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) is a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey that is currently conducted every 2 years by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics to examine disease prevalence and trends over time in noninstitutionalized U.S. civilian residents.
Diabetes-associated nephropathy is one of the two main causes of CKD. Diabetic nephropathy accounts for 30-40% of CKD and 44% of incident ESRD in the United States (United States Renal Data System, 2011). Additionally, diabetes-related CKD is associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality (Foley et al., 2005; Go, Chertow, Fan, McCulloch, & Hsu, 2004). Thus, assessing the burden of this risk factor is essential to CKD surveillance. The NHANES surveys are currently conducted every 2 years by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics to examine disease prevalence and trends over time in different cross-sectional representative samples of noninstitutionalized U.S. civilian residents. The survey consists of a standardized in-home interview and a physical examination and blood and urine collection at a mobile examination center (MEC). Here we examined data from the 1999-2000, 2001-2002, 2003-2004, 2005-2006, 2007-2008, 2009-2010, 2011-2012, 2013-2014, 2015-2016, and 2017-2018 NHANES. Self-reported diabetes was defined by answer of “yes” to the question “have you ever been told by a doctor or other health professional that you have diabetes or sugar diabetes?” Glycohemoglobin, which was approved as a diagnostic test for diabetes in 2010 (American Diabetes Association, 2010), was measured in all participants; fasting glucose and oral glucose tolerance tests (2005-2016 only) were conducted in subsets of the NHANES participants. Medications were recorded from prescription bottles during the interview; metformin HCL, insulin, glimepiride, glipizide, glyburide, pioglitazone, rosiglitazone, meglitinides, DPP-4 inhibitors, GLP-1 receptors, SGLT2 inhibitors and any combination thereof were considered diabetes medications.