Background: Short-term continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion treatment (CSII) in patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes (T2DM) can improve β-cell function and insulin sensitivity, which results in long-term remission. However, the effect of CSII on peripheral neuropathy is rarely studied.

Methods: 63 T2DM patients (HbA1c>9%) were hospitalized and treated with CSII for 2 weeks. Peripheral autonomic neuropathy was measured by SUDOSCAN, which provides an age adjusted electrochemical skin conductance (ESC) composite score incorporating hands/feet ESC measurements, with a score ≤60 indicating sudomotor dysfunction. Blood glucose, HbA1c, C-peptide and SUDOSCAN were measured before and after CSII. HOMA-B was used for assessment of β-cell function.

Results: The average HbA1c of included patients was 10.5% with median duration of T2DM was 3.5 years. There were 27 (42.9%) patients who had sudomotor dysfunction at baseline. After 2 weeks of CSII, the proportion of sudomotor dysfunction (42.9% vs. 31.7%, P=0.020) was significantly deceased along with significantly improved HbA1c (10.0±1.9 vs. 8.1±1.0, P<0.001) and HOMA-B [22.0 (IQR 12.1-37.0) vs. 56.9 (IQR 42.4-81.8) , P<0.001]. Correlation analysis revealed that higher ESC composite score was correlated with better HOMA-B after CSII (r=0.445, P=0.015) .

Conclusion: Peripheral autonomic neuropathy could be improved by CSII in T2DM. The improvement of β-cell function could be responsible for the amelioration of peripheral nerve function. Keywords: Short-term continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion treatment; peripheral autonomic neuropathy; type 2 diabetes; β-cell function

Disclosure

J.Jin:None.

Funding

National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1314100) ; the Key-Area Research and Development Program ofGuangdong Province (2019B020230001) ; the China Postdoctoral ScienceFoundation (2018M640871)

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