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. 2025 Aug:226:112365.
doi: 10.1016/j.diabres.2025.112365. Epub 2025 Jul 8.

Prevalence of diabetic kidney disease by world region of birth among immigrants and long-term residents of Canada with type 2 diabetes

Sebat Mohamed  1 , Lorraine L Lipscombe  2 , Jennifer Lipscombe  3 , Chris Kenaszchuk  4 , Deva Thiruchelvam  5 , Baiju R Shah  6 , Ghazal S Fazli  7 , Gillian Booth  8 , Laura Rosella  9 , Calvin Ke  10
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Free article

Prevalence of diabetic kidney disease by world region of birth among immigrants and long-term residents of Canada with type 2 diabetes

Sebat Mohamed et al. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2025 Aug.
Free article

Abstract

Aims: To measure the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) among immigrants and long-term residents with type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Methods: We conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study in Ontario, Canada among adults aged 20-79 years with T2D. The exposure was world region of birth (immigrants); long-term residents were the comparison group. The outcome was DKD, defined by the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) categories. We measured the age-sex standardized prevalence of DKD and constructed logistic regression models to compute adjusted odds ratios (OR) estimating the association between the exposure and outcome.

Results: We included 210,693 immigrants (mean age 59.8 [standard deviation 10.8] years, 54.3 % male) and 539,632 long-term residents (mean age 64.1 [10.4] years, 56.1 % male). Immigrants born in East Asia had the highest prevalence and adjusted odds of the KDIGO low-risk category (76.6 %, OR 1.59, 1.53-1.64). Immigrants born in Southeast Asia had the lowest prevalence of the KDIGO low-risk category (64.0 %), and the highest prevalence and adjusted odds of the moderately-increased, high, and very-high risk KDIGO categories (OR: 1.21, [1.18-1.25]; 1.20, 1.14-1.26; 1.18, 1.12-1.25) compared to long-term residents.

Conclusions: There is substantial variation in the prevalence of DKD among immigrants according to world region of birth.

Keywords: Diabetic kidney disease; Immigration; Prevalence; Type 2 diabetes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: C Ke reports consulting fees and honoraria from Sanofi, Abbott, and AstraZeneca outside of this work. The other authors have nothing to disclose.

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