Neuropathy - Triglycerides Implicated In Diabetes Nerve Loss

A common blood test for triglycerides – a well-known cardiovascular disease risk factor – may also for the first time allow doctors to predict which patients with diabetes are more likely to develop the serious, common complication of neuropathy. In a study now online in Diabetes , University of Michigan and Wayne State University researchers analyzed data from 427 diabetes patients with neuropathy, a condition in which nerves are damaged or lost with resulting numbness, tingling and pain, often in the hands, arms, legs and feet. "These results set the stage for clinicians to be able to address lowering lipid counts with their diabetes patients with neuropathy as vigilantly as they pursue glucose control," says Eva L. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute and director of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Center at U-M for the study of complications in diabetes. Until now, doctors have lacked an effective way to predict which diabetes patients are at greatest risk of neuropathy. Elevated triglycerides are one of the most common features of the lipid disorders found in patients with type 2 diabetes, by far the most common form of diabetes, says Rodica Pop-Busui, M.D., Ph.D., one of the study's authors and an assistant professor in the metabolism, endocrinology and diabetes division of the Department of Internal Medicine at the U-M Medical School. "Our findings in this study reinforce the tight links between cardiovascular disease and peripheral neuropathy in patients with diabetes. We found that out of all the data collected on these patients, elevated triglycerides were the factor that differed the most, when we compared the patients who lost nerve fibers with those who didn't," says Sullivan. Funding: National Institutes of Health, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Center for the Study of Complications in Diabetes, American Diabetes Association, Thomas Foundation, Sigma Tau Research, and the U-M Program for Neurology Research and Discovery.