Prevalence of and risk factors for cranial neuropathy in diabetic and non-diabetic patients

OBJECTIVE: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major global health concern and is as-sociated with high morbidity and mortality as well as poor quality of life. This health burden is most-ly due to complications associated with DM. Cra-nial nerve neuropathy is not a well-studied com-plication of DM. In this study, we aimed to study the prevalence and risk factors for the develop-ment of cranial neuropathy in diabetic patients.PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study among diabetics who are attending Almanhal Primary Healthcare Center, Abha, Aseer Province, Saudi Arabia. A total of 714 subjects were included, 238 of them were in the study group and 476 were controls chosen randomly from the same community. SPSS pro-gram was used to calculate demographic, clin-ical, and biochemical parameters as well as to measure the statistically significant differenc-es. Analysis was conducted using the SPSS sta-tistical package and p-value lower than or equal to 0.05 was considered statistically significant.RESULTS: The diabetic patients were signifi-cantly older than the control group; the mean standard deviation (SD) age was 59.78 (8.26), and 34.04 (9.45) for both study and control groups, respectively. The prevalence of crani-al neuropathy was higher in diabetic patients. Among diabetic patients, hyperlipidemia, ges-tational DM, compliance with DM treatment, and the presence of microvascular complications of DM are significant risk factors for the develop-ment of cranial neuropathy.CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the prevalence of cranial neuropathy is higher in the diabetic population than in the non-diabetic pop-ulation. The oculomotor and trigeminal nerves were the most commonly affected nerves in dia-betic patients compared to the abducent and fa-cial nerves in non-diabetic patients.