Abstract
Diabetic neuropathy is a common complication of diabetes mellitus for which there is no definite treatment. To investigate their therapeutic effiect in diabetic neuropathy, we administered trimetazidine hydrochloric (VF group: VF 45 mg/day to 78 patients for over 3 months), prostaglandin E1 (PGE1 group: drip infused PGE1 60 μg/day to 10 patients for 4 weeks), and aldose reductase inhibitor (ONO 2235 group: ONO-2235 450 mg/day to 13 patients for 4 weeks). Subjective symptoms were monitored, motor and sensory nerve conduction velocities (MCV, SCV) were measured at, before and after treatment. Aldose reductase inhibitor (ONO-2235) seemed ineffective for diabetic patients with neuropathy of a long duration. We suspect that it could be a preventive agent in the treatment of diabetic neuropathy. Vasodilators VF and PGE1 were more effective in improving subjective symptoms and objective neurological findings than ONO-2235. Recently, the Schwann cell hypothesis has been supported by numerous investigators, however, we could not invalidate the vascular hypothesis.
