NEW YORK, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A vitamin derivative prescribed in Germany to treat nerve problems also appears to reduce the risk of blindness, kidney problems and limb amputation due to diabetes, a study released Monday concludes.
Researchers led by Dr. Michael Brownlee of Albert Einstein College of Medicine studied a substance called benfotiamine in diabetic rats. Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine, also known as vitamin B1, which is found in fish, meat, peanuts, beans, peas and wheat germ.
Diabetic rats were treated with benfotiamine and compared to animals left untreated and a diabetes-free group. The rats receiving no treatment developed diabetic retinopathy within nine months, a condition in which the blood vessels of the eye deteriorate, leading to blindness. The eye tissue in the treated rats remained as healthy as in rats that did not have diabetes.
The benfotiamine served as "a roadblock or a detour," to glucose molecules that could have damaged blood vessels, Brownlee told United Press International.
"Nobody ever determined what level (of benfotiamine) a person needs to take to block these pathways. We can guess, but we just know in animals," he said. "The first thing that needs to be done is to determine what dose would be sufficient to block these pathways in humans."
Researchers also reported benfotiamine produced a similar protective effect in the kidneys of the diabetic rats. Kidney failure is one of the top leading causes of death among diabetics.
Benfotiamine worked by boosting an enzyme that stopped excessive glucose levels from damaging the blood vessels. Vitamin B1 has been known to cause at least a 20 percent increase in this enzyme's power, but benfotiamine appears to be absorbed more readily into the body and therefore is more effective, raising enzyme activity by as much as 400 percent, the researchers report in the Feb. 18 online issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
Diabetes afflicts about 17 million Americans, or just over 6 percent of the population, making it one of the most common conditions. It can be managed with medication, glucose-monitoring, diet and exercise, but complications from diabetes can also be lethal if the disease progresses too far.
"It's better to lower glucose than to treat the complications and this paper did not show you could really reverse the complications, but rather stop them from getting worse and you can do that from adequate treatment of the diabetes in the first place," Dr. Robert Morley, a professor of medicine at St. Louis University told UPI. Nevertheless, Morley said, "The concept is an exciting concept. It's a very interesting avenue with the ability to treat complications of diabetes."
Dr. Luigi Meneghini, director of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami, Fla., said one of the advantages of the findings is thiamine, which already has been proven safe, showed no harm to the rats.
"Thiamine is water soluble and you pee it out if you get too much of it," Meneghini told UPI. "I think this could have a lot of promise."
(Reported by Katrina Woznicki, UPI Science News, in Washington)
