[Prevalence of peripheral somatic neuropathy in type 2 diabetes mellitus]

A cross-sectional study of 297 type 2 diabetic patients was carried out to evaluate their prevalence of peripheral somatic neuropathy. Their mean age was 61 years, with a predominance of females (65.7%) over males (34.3%). The clinical duration of diabetes was longer than 10 year in 45% of the evaluated patients, and metabolic control was poor in almost one half of them (49.5%). The most common symptom were cramps, while abnormal vibratory sense was the predominant physical finding. Neuropathy was significantly associated with mean age (t = 4.32, p less than 0.0001), the years of duration of diabetes (chi(2) = 11.16, p = 0.01) and the metabolic control degree (chi(2) = 24.2, p less than 0.001) in the bivariate analysis, while in multivariate analysis it was only associated with age (e beta = 1,637, p less than 0.0001) and the metabolic control degree (e beta = 4.02, p less than 0.0001).