Gene therapy with the angiogenic neuropeptide secretoneurin ameliorates experimental diabetic neuropathy

What is it about?

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease associated with high blood sugar levels due to impaired glucose utilization. Long-term complications include coronary heart disease, stroke, foot ulcers, and damage to the eyes and nerves. Latter one is also called polyneuropathy. Symptoms of polyneuropathy include pain, numbness, imbalance and sensory deficits, which might trigger foot ulceration initiated by traumatic injury. In the worst case these injuries result in amputation. Secretoneurin is a neuropeptide which mediates the growth of new blood vessels. Since damage of the vasa nervorum (=vessels that nurish the nerves) has been hypothesized as possible underlying mechanism we thought that treatment with secretoneurin might improve polyneuropathy by generating new blood vessels that supply blood and nutrients to the nerves. Our experiments showed that treatment with secretoneurin positively influences function of Schwann cells (=cells that cover peripheral nerves and guarantee fast conduction of a nerval stimulus), improves nerve conduction velocities and mediates growth of new nerval blood vessels. Due to our promising data we think that secretoneurin might be a promising factor for the treatment of diabetic polyneuropathy. Treatment of secretoneurin therapy could result in reduced amputation-rates, improved life quality for patients suffering from diabetes mellitus and a long-term cost reduction for the health care system. Of course, before an application in daily clinical routine our positive experimental results have to be confirmed by a clinical trial.

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