[An aid to the electrophysiological diagnosis of diabetic peripheral neuropathy]

The electrophysiological diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy in diabetics becomes increasingly difficult with the increase in number of parameters measured. We have examined 102 subjects: 60 diabetics, 32 control subjects and 10 with impaired glucose tolerance. From the 37 recorded parameters during 8 examinations, a linear discriminant analysis allowed us to separate the 19 diabetics with clinical neuropathy and the control subjects with only 5 parameters, with a good concordance (96%): the motor conduction velocities (MCV) of the peroneal and median nerves, the amplitude of the action potential (AP) of the sural nerve, the Hmax/Mmax ratio and the M latency of the Hoffman reflex. These parameters, weighted with a coefficient, constitute a score of discrimination. This score has been tested by the Jackknife method on the same sample (94% of well-classified patients), then validated on the other patients. Thus we propose a method to aid the diagnosis of diabetic peripheral neuropathy, without the arbitrary character of the classical single parameter method, and allowing easy repetition.