Aug 17, 2009 6:24 pm US/Eastern
HealthWatch: Neuropathy
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
One of the most feared complications from diabetes is amputations of toes and feet. That often happens partly because diabetics suffer from something called neuropathy, where they can't feel their feet. There is an exciting new way to treat this nerve problem, using magnets.
These days Joan Diblasi gets around pretty well, but that wasn't the case just a few short months ago.
"I was walking with a cane, with difficulty, and I still couldn't tap my feet or feel significant sensation in my feet," said Diblasi.
The problem is that she is a diabetic and her high blood sugar had damaged the nerve fibers in her feet, which caused both numbness and pain.
"My original pain was pain in my left thigh, and then it spread to my feet. And it became very difficult for me to walk on this, on this left leg," Diblasi said.
Then she saw Dr. Michael Weintraub of New York Medical College, who was experimenting with a device that utilized spinning magnets to produce a pulsed electromagnetic field that stimulated her feet. The results were just published in a study of diabetics who suffered from painful neuropathy.
Some patients reported that their pain got better, although overall it wasn't quite statistically significant.
"They had reduced pain in those groups. We also found that we selectively influenced burning and itching pain as opposed to routine pain," Weinstraub said.
Perhaps even more important is that biopsies of the skin of the feet showed that the group treated with magnetism actually regrew some of the nerves fibers they had lost due to neuropathy.
"It opens up a whole new idea that we might be able to help regeneration of damaged nerves in the spinal cord. And there's a lot of possibilities here," said Dr. Weintraub.
Diblasi was in the magnet group and she's convinced it helped her.
"And now, I can walk without a cane, and I can tap my feet, both of them," she said.
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