A new treatment prevents the development of neuropathy in diabetic patients read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/843-a-new-treatment-prevents-the-development-of-neuropathy-in-diabetic-patients

A new dermatological treatment being tested by Northwestern Medicine scientists, showed that depleting a chemical called GM3 through genetic change prevented with the development of neuropathy in obese diabetic mice.

Researchers are applying a gene therapy ointment to deplete GM3 and GM3 synthase, which is the enzyme that makes GM3. The hope is that this GM3-depleting ointment, applied just to the footpad of diabetic mice, will prevent or, even better, reverse the existing neuropathy.

Dr. Amy Paller, the Walter J. Hamlin professor of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said, we have such terrible treatments right now for the neuropathy of diabetes. This is a novel pathogenesis based approach that looks at what's causing the neuropathy and reverses that instead of just treating the pain.

For this treatment, researchers had discovered that routine diabetic mice had a lot more GM3 and GM3 synthase in their nerves compared to normal mice. They found the same thing to be true in the skin of mice and humans with diabetes.

They compared the appearance and function of the nerves in mice in which GM3 was depleted by genetic manipulation. In routine diabetic mouse skin, the nerves had almost disappeared from degeneration, but they were absolutely normal in appearance in the GM3-depleted mice, even though the mice were as obese and diabetic as the routine diabetic mice.

To test response to pain, researchers used filaments of increasing the force to touch the paws of mice and then timed how long it took for the mice to withdraw their paw from the pain stimulation.

Paller said, the routine diabetic mice had nerve changes that intensified their pain sensation, and they experienced a lot of pain with just a light touch.  When we rescued them by depleting their GM3, they didn't withdraw their feet any more quickly than the mice without diabetes.

 

Based on these discoveries, researchers have advanced the approach to regionally depleting GM3 in the feet with the novel ointment.