Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Sep 15, 2016; 7(17): 342-353
Published online Sep 15, 2016. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v7.i17.342
Entrapment neuropathies in diabetes mellitus
Eugenia Rota, Nicola Morelli
Eugenia Rota, Nicola Morelli, Department of Neurology, Ospedale G. da Saliceto, 29121 Piacenza, Italy
Author contributions: Rota E performed the majority of the writing; Morelli N made a substantive intellectual contribution, performing a critical revision of the content of the review and preparing the figure and table.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with the author or the coauthor.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Eugenia Rota, MD, Department of Neurology, Ospedale G. da Saliceto, Via Taverna 49, 29121 Piacenza, Italy. eugenia.rota.md@gmail.com
Telephone: +39-0523-303310 Fax: +39-0523-303322
Received: March 25, 2016
Peer-review started: March 26, 2016
First decision: May 13, 2016
Revised: July 9, 2016
Accepted: July 20, 2016
Article in press: July 22, 2016
Published online: September 15, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Diabetic neuropathy syndromes include both generalized and focal/multifocal forms. Entrapment neuropathies (EN) are remarkably frequent in the focal forms and may be the earliest neurophysiological abnormalities in diabetes, even in the absence of a generalized polyneuropathy. Based on a pathophysiological hypothesis, diabetic patients’ peripheral nerves, damaged by the altered glucose metabolism, show both functional impairment and structural changes. This makes them more susceptible to chronic compression in anatomically constrained channels. Therefore, EN may be considered a neurophysiological hallmark of peripheral nerve involvement in diabetes mellitus.