AGT and Hypertension: Factors such as hypertension (Skov et al., 2016), hyperglycemia (Wu et al., 2023), oxidative stress (Ma et al., 2021), advanced glycation end products (AGEs), and angiotensin II can induce the onset of DN by activating pathways like transforming growth factor β (TGF-β), nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), Nrf2-mediated oxidative stress, and mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) (Hwang et al., 2019).