EGF and diabetic kidney disease: Urinary EGF and the EGF to MCP-1 ratio were significantly associated with the risk of early kidney function decline and a combination of all these markers resulted in a significant improvement in the predictive performance regarding early kidney function decline [26] In a cross-sectional study, 1811 patients with early-stage diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and type 2 diabetes patients without DKD and 208 patients with advanced-stage DKD were included.