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OBJECTIVE - To assess associations between peripheral sensory neuropathy (PSN) and other diabetes-related complications.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD - In an area-based cohort of type 2 diabetic subjects, we investigated 156 subjects (age 61.7 ± 7.2 years and diabetes duration 7.0 ± 5.7 years) by questionnaires, clinical examinations, blood and urine sampling, and review of medical records.
RESULTS - Prevalence of PSN, assessed by monofilament and neurothesiometer testing, increased with severity of retinopathy (50% frequency in moderate and 100% in severe or proliferative retinopathy; P = 0.02). Vibration perception threshold was higher in subjects with retinopathy (25.6 ± 8.9 vs. 20.5 ± 8.9 V; P = 0.007). PSN was more common in subjects with overt nephropathy, with higher vibration perception thresholds, than in subjects without overt nephropathy. Subjects with PSN but no retinopathy had twice the prevalence of peripheral vascular disease (PVD) (52%) as subjects with both PSN and retinopathy (19%; P = 0.05). In subjects with PSN alone, PVD was three times more likely (52%) than in subjects without PSN (16%; P = 0.001). In multivariate analysis, PSN was independently associated with PVD (odds ratio 2.31; P = 0.007), age (1.12; P = 0.008), male sex (2.01; P = 0.02), and HDL cholesterol (0.21; P < 0.05) and tended to be independently associated with IGF-1 binding protein (1.03; P = 0.05) but not with diabetes duration or AlC.
CONCLUSIONS - In a representative population of type 2 diabetes, PSN is related to microvascular and macrovascular pathology. PSN is possibly affected by the IGF axis.
Diabetes Care 32:317-322, 2009
Peripheral sensory neuropathy (PSN) is a well-known complication of diabetes attributed to chronic hyperglycemia (1,2). However, the risk of PSN is also increased by advancing age and affected by height and possibly by sex (3) and poorly defined factors, such as processes coupled to regulation of IGF-1 (4,5). This makes it difficult to identify specific diabetes components of neurop- athy. Retinopathy, on the other hand, is a complication of diabetes strictly coupled to metabolic control and is also more eas- ily investigated (1). It could be conjec- tured that metabolic control would be a strong determinant of PSN in subjects with both retinopathy and neuropathy but less so in diabetic subjects with neuropathy alone. It...