Several studies have investigated the association between the changes of serum uromodulin and diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, the results are still controversial. Hence, this meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the association of uromodulin with DN.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Studies were included if they met the following criteria:

  1. serum level of uromodulin was determined;
  2. the samples were enrolled from diabetic patients;
  3. mean ± SD was reported for uromodulin between patients with and without DN;
  4. the level of albumin to creatinine ratio (ACR), glomerular filtration rate (GFR), or albumin excretion rate (AER) in patients with DN was determined

Exclusion Criteria:

• Studies were excluded according to the following criteria:

  1. duplicate studies;
  2. review articles;
  3. non original research articles;
  4. studies with insufficient data to extract;
  5. non-human research;
  6. studies that determined urine level of uromodulin.

The systematic search strategy retrieved 275 publications by the 4 databases (PubMed 76, Cochrane Library 11, Web of Science 107, and Scopus 81). 144 studies remained after exclusion the duplicates. After screening title and abstract 135 studies were excluded. 9 studies remained for full text and data reviewing. 4 studies of them were excluded as they didn't meet the eligibility criteria. In addition, 1 study was retrieved by manual search from Google Scholar. Finally, 6 articles were included [20-25]. The selected studies included 1774 participant