Giuseppe Lauria

TL;DR: A joint meeting of the 19th annual Diabetic Neuropathy Study Group of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (NEURODIAB) and the 8th International Symposium on Diabetes in Toronto, Canada, 13-18 October 2009, expert panels were convened to provide updates on classification, definitions, diagnostic criteria, and treatments of diabetic peripheral neuropathies as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: Revision of the guidelines on the use of skin biopsy in the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, published in 2005, has become appropriate owing to publication of more relevant articles and most of the new studies focused on small fiber neuropathy (SFN).

TL;DR: Patients with pure SFN were identified using a new diagnostic ‘gold standard’, based on the presence of at least two abnormal results at clinical, QST and skin biopsy examination, and a significant inverse correlation between IENF density and both cold and warm thresholds at the leg was found.

TL;DR: Punch skin biopsy is a safe and reliable technique andConfocal microscopy may be particularly useful to investigate myelinated nerve fibres, dermal receptors and dermal annex innervation and to assess the potential usefulness of skin biopsies as an outcome measure in peripheral neuropathy trials.

TL;DR: Screening patients with biopsy‐confirmed idiopathic SFN for mutations in the SCN9A gene, encoding voltage‐gated sodium channel NaV1.7, which is preferentially expressed in small diameter peripheral axons, identifies a genetic basis for I‐SFN.