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peripheral neuropathy. Being able to prevent it would improve the quality of life for people with diabetes, as well as those with cancer.
According to the MD Anderson Cancer Center, 30- 40 % of the thousands of cancer patients each year experience peripheral neuropathy, either from the cancer itself or the toxins used to treat it with chemotherapy. The neuropathy sometimes is reversible once cancer treatment is concluded, but people with diabetes have no such exit door. Neuropathy treatment is generally focused on treating the symptoms, managing the underlying causes, and relieving pain to improve quality of life.
“ Disease can affect nutrient needs by altering nutrient absorption, transport, or utilization,” said Martha Field, Ph. D., an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University who also worked on the project.“ It is exciting to see here that meeting those needs also alters disease-related physiological outcomes in diabetic peripheral neuropathy.”
Joydeep Chakraborty, Ph. D., lead author of the PNAS article, worked with Stover as a post-doctoral scholar for several years and last year joined the biomedical sciences research faculty at the College of Medicine. Other authors were Adhideb Ghosh, Ph. D., of the University of Zurich; Eunice B. Awuah, Ph. D., of Cornell; and Sally P. Stabler, M. D., of the University of Colorado.
The team plans to conduct clinical trials in Tallahassee, Stover said.
“ If we see the same results in humans, which we believe we will, based on the literature that’ s out there and what we’ ve shown in this paper, that will change the standard of care,” he said.
“ The goal is to understand how the disease state, especially chronic disease states, changes nutrient requirements. Once we know what those requirements are, we can then design ways, either through supplements or different dietary patterns, so people can manage their disease more effectively and be as healthy as they possibly can be.
“ This is exciting stuff.”