**3. Prognostic Biomarkers in CKD**

The importance of prognostic biomarkers in the CKD setting is crucial. Indeed, CKD is a multifactorial disease in which risk factors play different roles in different individuals and in different stages of the disease. It was demonstrated, for example, that the presence of type 2 diabetes leads to the development of CKD in up to 30% of subjects. This means that, in these patients, the deleterious pathogenetic mechanisms of diabetes mellitus are sufficient to damage the kidneys with the onset of typical diabetic glomerulosclerosis. Conversely, it is also possible that, in a portion of diabetic patients, the kidneys are injured by the co-existence of arterial hypertension, which causes different lesions (mainly injuring the kidney vessels), with a completely different prognosis.
