Impairment of Visual Evoked Potentials
An early central manifestation of diabetic neuropathy?
- Tamás T. Várkonyi, MD1,
- Tünde Petõ, MD, PHD2,
- Rózsa Dégi, MD2,
- Katalin Keresztes, MD3,
- Csaba Lengyel, MD1,
- Márta Janáky, MD, PHD2,
- Péter Kempler, MD, PHD, DSC3 and
- János Lonovics, MD, PHD, DSC1
- 1First Department of Medicine, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary
- 2Department of Ophthalmology, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary
- 3First Department of Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
Impairment of the central nervous system is a frequent complication of diabetes (1), but its clinical importance is still underestimated. The exact pathophysiology of the central nervous dysfunction is not clear, but it seems to be multifactorial, involving vascular and metabolic factors, similar to the pathogenesis of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (1). Earlier studies revealed new data on the central manifestations of diabetes but did not permit a comprehensive comparative analysis of the peripheral and central neuronal dysfunctions (2,3).
We recently observed significant correlations between the impairment of the auditory evoked potentials and the severity of autonomic and peripheral sensory neuropathy in type 1 diabetes (4). In addition to the detection of the auditory evoked potentials, evaluation of the visual evoked potentials furnishes another diagnostic tool for the assessment of functional anomalies of the cerebral function, even at an early stage of the pathogenetic process (2). The aim of this study was to demonstrate …
