There are also patients in whom the condition causes severe pain, which is difficult to treat.
But a study has now come up with a potentially effective drug, which has a perhaps surprising main ingredient.
It’s about chili peppers, or rather the chemical compound that makes peppers so spicy.
The research was funded by the British Diabetes Association and published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neurology.
The chemical compound, capsaicin, appears to have both an analgesic effect and repair damaged nerves.
Plaster has great effect
The study included 75 individuals who had diabetic neuropathy.
50 subjects suffered from nerve pain. Of these, 32 were treated with a plaster containing 8 percent capsaicin, which was applied to both feet for 30 minutes at a time.
18 patients received current standard treatment for their pain. The remaining 25 participants, who had no pain complaints, were also treated with the capsaicin patch.
During the study, participants were required to keep a pain diary. In addition, the researchers took skin samples from the respondents’ feet at the beginning and end of the study.
After three months, it turned out that the subjects who had received the capsaicin patch had a much greater reduction in pain than those who had not been treated with the patch.
According to the researchers, this may be because capsaicin blocks pain signals from the nerves when the substance comes into contact with the skin.
Even more startling, the people treated with the patch had more new nerves detected in the skin samples at the end of the study than at the start.
According to the researchers, the results indicate that capsaicin is able to repair damaged nerves. However, they emphasize that more research is needed before the treatment can be rolled out as standard.
Other studies on the effects of capsaicin have also shown promising results.
For example, there are indications that capsaicin can promote the healing of certain skin conditions such as psoriasis.