The National Institutes of Health has awarded $3.6 million to a team of neurosurgical, neurology, and neuroscience researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine to test a novel diagnosis and treatment combination for painful diabetic neuropathy. The approach combines spinal cord stimulation (SCS) with measurement of small fiber nerve activity using a patent-pending device called Detecting Early Neuropathy (DEN).
“Options to diagnose and treat peripheral neuropathy are very limited and ineffective, and thus more research is needed to develop and test new options that can reduce the pain, discomfort, high medical costs, and loss of productivity for patients,” said co-principal investigator Kristy Townsend, PhD, associate professor in the OSU department of neurosurgery.
The DEN was developed to more sensitively, functionally, and qualitatively measure and diagnose small fiber neuropathy so that the condition can be detected more easily, and earlier in the disease progression when therapies are likely to be more effective. DEN measurements combined with tissue analyses will, for the first time, determine if SCS increases beneficial nerve regeneration as a contributor to pain relief.
The DEN is undergoing research and development by Townsend and colleagues through an academic spin-out company, Neuright Inc. Together, this research collaboration allows synergistic clinical and translational data collection to investigate clinical outcomes and cellular mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of SCS for patients with painful diabetic neuropathy.
