This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information:
verify here.

Rewarding for
you and us
Defeat Diabetes Foundation

Defeat Diabetes
Foundation
150 153rd Ave,
Suite 300
Madeira Beach, FL 33708

New Possible Neuropathy Drug

Posted: Monday, November 08, 2004

"An effective disease-modifying treatment is on the horizon," says Dr. Vera Bril of the University of Toronto.

A compound called sorbitol builds up in diabetes, and increased levels of sorbitol in nerves has been associated with nerve damage in animals, Bril and her colleagues explain in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

High sorbitol results from increased activity of an enzyme called aldose reductase, suggesting that treatments to block the enzyme might prevent or reverse nerve damage.

Bril's team gave patients with diabetic neuropathy a potent inhibitor of aldose reductase called AS-3201, and measured sorbitol in a nerve in their calf before and after 12 weeks of treatment.

"For the first time, we may see disease regression with a disease modifying treatment," Bril said.

Patients treated with the higher dose of AS-3201 showed improvement in the velocity of nerve signal conduction, the investigators report, but vibratory perception threshold and clinical scores did not change during this brief study.

"There is great hope for the treatment of diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy," she concluded

Source: Diabetes In Control.com: