Diabetic nephropathy is the most prevalent cause for end-stage renal disease in the United States and the Western world. In this disease, tubular injury and progressive interstitial fibrosis contribute significantly to renal failure and predict progression to end-stage renal disease. In early diabetic renal injury, there is podocyte drop-out which is thought to cause glomerular proteinuria and subsequent diabetic glomerular injury. Bone morphogenetic protein 7 (BMP-7) is physiologically expressed in podocytes and tubular epithelial cells. Previous studies show that BMP7 is a podocyte survival factor and rescues podocytes from diabetic injury.Our study is aiming to detect role of BMP7 in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy. Patients and methods: 40 diabetic patients, half of them with diabetic nephropathy and the other half without nephropathy and 10 healthy persons were subjected to estimation of levels of serum BMP7, microalbuminuria, HbA1c, urea, creatinine. Results: we found that that the lowest levels of BMP7 were in patients with diabetic nephropathy followed by diabetic patients without nephropathy with highest levels in normal subjects, also we found a negative correlation between HbA1c levels and BMP7 levels in all diabetic cases and a negative correlation between microalbuminuria levels and BMP7 levels in all diabetic cases. Conclusion: bone morphogenetic protein 7 has a pathogenic role in diabetic nephropathy.