Chonnam Med J.  2000 Sep;36(3):255-263.

Effect of Serum HbA1c and Duration of Diabetes Mellitus on Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy

• Yang YS
• Kim JK
• Kim BC
• Kim MK
• Sohn EJ
• Cho KH

Abstract

BACKGROUNDS: Diabetic peripheral neuropathies (DPN) are very common complication of diabetes Mellitus (DM). It has been known that nerve conduction study (NCS) is a valuable diagnostic tool of DPN but is affected by various clinical factors of DM. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of serum HbA1c level and duration of DM on NCS value of DPN.
METHODS
NCS was conducted in 29 healthy controls (4 males and 25 females) and 117 diabetic patients (78 males and 39 females). In all subjects, the median, ulnar, tibial, peroneal and sural nerves were tested to estimate NCS values such as nerve conduction velocity, distal latency, and compound muscle action potential (CMAP) or sensory nerve action potentials (SNAP) of the individual nerves. Physiologic factors such as age and height were investigated in all subjects and clinical parameters such as duration of DM and HbA1c level in diabetic patients. The correlation between the NCS values and clinical parameters was analyzed.
RESULTS
The nerve conduction velocity of distal segment of the median, ulnar and peroneal nerve was significantly slower than that of proximal segment of the nerves (p<0.01). It was shown that nerve conduction velocity was mainly influenced by DM rather than amplitude of CMAP or CNAP of the nerves. With the exception of the effect of age and height of the patients on the NCS values, there was positive correlation between HbA1c level and abnormalities of motor nerve function, and between duration of DM and abnormalities of sensory nerve function, respectively (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION
As a result of this study, We concluded that NCS was very useful to diagnose the diabetic peripheral neuropathy and that there would be somewhat different pathomechanism in genesis of diabetic motor neuropathy and sensory neuropathy, which could be demonstrated by further study.

Keyword

Nerve Conduction Study; Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy; HbA1c

MeSH Terms

Action Potentials
Diabetes Mellitus*
Humans
Male
Neural Conduction
Peripheral Nervous System Diseases*
Peroneal Nerve
Sural Nerve