Johns Hopkins vascular surgeon Caitlin Hicks, M.D., M.S., discusses recent research findings on prevalence of peripheral neuropathy and its association with mortality in the United States.
In this study, we evaluated the association between peripheral neuropathy and all cause and cardiovascular mortality and US adults. We looked at patients with both diabetes and without diabetes. Because peripheral neuropathy is unknown disease that is related to diabetes, however, it has not been described in the past to be is prevalent in people without diabetes. In our study, we showed that the prevalence of purple neuropathy in older adults without diabetes was actually surprisingly high, at nearly 30%. Among participants that had perfect neuropathy, they had a significantly higher rate of all cars mortality out to 13 years of follow up compared to people without purple neuropathy. This was true among people with and without diabetes, suggesting that perfect neuropathy is perhaps an independent predictor of mortality that we've not previously recognized. The risk factors for purple neuropathy are fairly well described in the diabetic population and include hyperglycemia and poor blood sugar control. In people without diabetes, it's they're not well as well described. We know that purple neuropathy can cause a za result of cancer with chemotherapy treatment or of excessive alcohol use. However, after adjusting for these variables, participants in our study had persistently higher rates of peripheral neuropathy than we expected. And the association of peripheral neuropathy with all cause and cardiovascular mortality was significant despite risk adjustment. Interestingly, we actually found that participants that did not have diabetes but did have peripheral neuropathy had a higher rate of mortality both all cause and cardiovascular than participants that had diabetes but no peripheral neuropathy. This suggests that purple neuropathy perhaps pretends a risk of mortality that is even higher than the independent risk of mortality with diabetes.
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Instagram
E-News
BROADCASTMED