Diabetic Kidney Disease: A Call to Action: Preface

As guest editor for this Diabetes Spectrum From Research to Practice section, I am pleased to introduce a tour de force on the theme topic of diabetic kidney disease (DKD). My journey in diabetes began as an observer. In youth, during the early 1970s, I watched my tennis partner, Cindy, struggle with the complexities of her blood glucose control, while still striving to play competitively. Her episodes of hypoglycemia were scary, and urine glucose testing just did not cut it. The era of self-monitoring of blood glucose was still years away, but eventually we got there. Fast forward to medical school days in the late 1970s. I remember what a breakthrough it was to have “chemsticks” to check blood glucose at the bedside of hospitalized patients. Diabetes educators appeared on the wards and taught the patients (and us) just how to do it. A new age in diabetes care had surely arrived. Throughout medical school, and then a residency in internal medicine, I was captivated by the physiology of metabolic disorders and the application of science to medicine. During this formative time, Dr. Mark E. Molitch was one of my inspirational mentors. I admired his commitment to advancing care for people with diabetes that has endured over the many years that followed our time together in the early 1980s. With his great wisdom and perception, he has penned a compelling editorial for the current issue titled, “Diabetic Kidney Disease: Much Progress, but Still More to Do” (p. 154). After residency, my next stop was fellowship training in endocrinology and metabolism. I was thrust into a world of insulin-glucose clamp studies with concurrent physiological assessments related to glucose counterregulation. And, we did these studies in real people with diabetes. I was amazed that they actually volunteered for such intensive, time-consuming, and …