The used CKD273 pattern showed that these biomarkers can detect initiation and progression of DN earlier than the currently used indicators, well preceding increases in urinary albumin levels. While the CKD273 pattern detected DN with >90% accuracy four years before clinical diagnosis, serum creatinine and/or Urine albumin execration rate did not detect DN earlier than one and two years before clinical manifestation, respectively. In addition, diagnostic accuracy was significantly lower compared to the CKD273 pattern. In addition, two independent studies on type 1 and type 2 DM patients, on longitudinally collected samples over a period of 10 years demonstrate that CKD273 markers of kidney disease were altered 3 to 5 years prior to manifestation of albuminuria, and 1 to 2 years prior to development of microalbuminuria. Thus, the performance of the CKD273 pattern is better than prediction based on urinary albumin values and represents potentially a significant improvement over the current state of the art in assessing DN, enabling earlier detection with higher accuracy than urinary albumin.