Can a combined obesity and metabolic index improve early renal screening in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)? A development and validation study published in the Journal of Diabetes Research reported that a novel index termed InMOI identified renal impairment in newly diagnosed patients with T2DM and showed stronger performance after refinement with body fat distribution data.

The study enrolled 387 newly diagnosed patients with T2DM for model development and 259 additional patients for validation. Renal impairment was defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) below 60 mL/min/1.73 m² and/or urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) of 30 mg/g or higher. Obesity- and metabolism-related indicators were collected.

In the modeling cohort, significantly independent indicators were selected using bidirectional stepwise regression to construct InMOI. The final index incorporated triglyceride-glucose body mass index (TyG-BMI) and triglyceride-glucose waist-to-hip ratio (TyG-WHR).

In the validation cohort, restricted cubic spline analysis showed a linear dose-response relationship between InMOI and the odds ratio for renal impairment. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.78 for InMOI. After replacing WHR with the visceral-to-subcutaneous fat area ratio measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), the modified m-InMOI achieved an AUC of 0.81.

The study concluded that metabolism-obesity indices may support early detection of diabetic renal damage, and that InMOI may offer a practical screening approach for diabetic kidney disease.