Carnitine for Body Composition in Hemodialysis Patients

Background: Authors and colleagues have continued clinical research for hemodialysis patients. Currently, a pilot study presents intervention of carnitine for changes of the body composition. Subjects and Methods: Subjects were six patients on hemodialysis with intervention of carnitine (group 1). Average data were 74.3 years, 65.4 kg, 22.6 in BMI. As levocarnitine, L-Cartin FF injection 1000 mg was administered three times a week for six months. Group 2 has six control patients for age-, sex-, body weight, BMI-matched (group 2). Body composition of muscle and fat tissues were measured by InBody 770 on 0 and 6 months. Results: In group 1, muscle volume and skeletal muscle showed increasing tendency without statistical significance. In contrast, there were significant decreases of body fat volume (22.3 kg vs 20.5 kg, 39.0% vs 35.8%) (p<0.05). No significant differences were found in hemoglobin, total protein, albumin and Cardio-Thoracic Ratio (CTR) of chest X-ray. Group 2 showed no significant changes. Discussion and Conclusion: Hemodialysis patients often have muscular reduction. Previous reports showed improved lean body mass by carnitine administration, which may support our result. These results from current pilot study would be expected to become useful reference data in the pathophysiological investigation in patients on hemodialysis

Investigation of Nerve Conduction in Patients with Diabetes and/or Hemodialysis

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) has been clinically important, and nerve conduction studies (NCS) have been performed with rather complexity and high cost. By advances in technology, simple and useful DPN-Check device was developed obtaining NCS data as sural nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) and sural nerve action potential (SNAP). We enrolled 52 subjects classified into 4 groups according to the presence of hemodialysis (HD) and diabetes mellitus (DM) as follows: HD (+), DM (+) in group 1, HD (+), DM (-) in group 2, HD (-), DM (+) in group 3 and healthy controls in group 4. Average age was similar from 68 to 74 years in 4 groups. Median value of SNCV was 31, 48, 49, 54 m/sec, and median value of SNAP was 3, 9, 6, 22 μV, respectively, in 4 groups. These results might suggest some relationship between impaired states of HD and DM, and would become fundamental data for pathophysiological investigation of peripheral neuropathy of HD and/or DM in the future

Investigation of Nerve Conduction in Patients with Diabetes and/or Hemodialysis

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) has been clinically important, and nerve conduction studies (NCS) have been performed with rather complexity and high cost. By advances in technology, simple and useful DPN-Check device was developed obtaining NCS data as sural nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) and sural nerve action potential (SNAP). We enrolled 52 subjects classified into 4 groups according to the presence of hemodialysis (HD) and diabetes mellitus (DM) as follows: HD (+), DM (+) in group 1, HD (+), DM (-) in group 2, HD (-), DM (+) in group 3 and healthy controls in group 4. Average age was similar from 68 to 74 years in 4 groups. Median value of SNCV was 31, 48, 49, 54 m/sec, and median value of SNAP was 3, 9, 6, 22 μV, respectively, in 4 groups. These results might suggest some relationship between impaired states of HD and DM, and would become fundamental data for pathophysiological investigation of peripheral neuropathy of HD and/or DM in the future

Influence of Diabetes and Hemodialysis Against Nerve Conduction Studies

Background: Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) has been prevalent and discussed, and nerve conduction studies (NCS) has been continued. We have checked NCS using recently introduced useful DPN-Check device. Subjects and Methods: The subjects were 66 patients (pts) classified into 4 groups according to existence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and hemodialysis (HD); Group1: DM (+), HD (+) in 15 pts, group 2: DM (-), HD (+) in 15 pts, group 3: DM (+), HD (-) in 20 pts, group 4: 16 healthy controls. Methods included measurements of sural nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) and sural nerve action potential (SNAP) using HDN-1000. Results: Average age in each group was 64.4 years to 72.6 years. SNCV value of 4 group in average was 37.1 m/sec, 46.3 m/sec, 49.3 m/sec, 53.2 m/sec, respectively, and value of group 1 was significantly lower than those of group 2,3,4 (p<0.01). Similarly, average SNAP was 4.1 μV, 8.7 μV, 8.0 μV, 21.6 μV, respectively, and group 1,2,3 were significantly lower than group 4 (p<0.01). There was significant correlation between SNCV and SNAP in all subjects (p<0.01). Significant correlations were shown between DM duration and SNCV, and DM duration and SNAP (p<0.01). Discussion and Conclusion: SNCV and SNAP were measured successfully and easily by HDN-1000, indicating clinical availability. Obtained data suggested that 1) SNCV is not significantly decreased due to only uremic neuropathy, 2) SNCV is significantly decreased in patients with both HD and DM, 3) SNAP is significantly decreased in patents with DM for years and 4) SNAP would be remarkably decreased when HD is in addition to DM. These results would become the basal data of future NCS for DM and HD