Diabetic Neuropathy

Introduction

Diabetic neuropathy is a type of nerve damage that can occur if you have diabetes. High blood sugar can injure nerve fibres throughout your body, but diabetic neuropathy most often damages nerves in your legs and feet. Diabetic neuropathy is a common serious complication of diabetes. Yet you can often prevent diabetic neuropathy or slow its progress with tight blood sugar control and a healthy lifestyle.

Treatment

Good control of diabetes over time is the key to treating diabetic neuropathy. There is no cure for neuropathy, but keeping your blood sugar within a target range can reduce symptoms and prevent them from getting worse.To help control your diabetes, eat food that is good for you and exercise. Controlling diabetes means maintaining blood sugar levels (A1c) within the target range. This will do more than anything else to help prevent diabetic neuropathy from getting worse.

Statistics

Australian adults (5%), about 917,000 people, had diabetes in 2011–12, based on self-reported and measured data.29,545 people started using insulin in 2013 to treat their diabetes.900,000 hospitalisations-9% of all hospitalisations in 2013–14-where diabetes was the principal and/or additional diagnosis.1 in 10 or 15,095 Australian deaths in 2012, recorded diabetes as an underlying or associated cause of death.3 times as high diabetes death rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians compared with non-Indigenous Australians.2 times as high diabetes death rates in the lowest socioeconomic group compared with the highest group.

Research

Numerous drugs have been trialled with the aim of reversing the underlying disease process. Examples include aldose reductive inhibitors (such as ranirestat), alpha-lipoid acid, gamma-linoleic acid, and nerve growth factor. However, no agent has been found that can reliably halt progression of disease.in caring for a patient, as well as planning strategies to improve detection and management on a larger scale.