Please send me some information about treatment of diabetic polyneuropathy with foot pain with alpha-lipoic acid, which is popular in our medical texts now. I want to know how to apply it, oral or parenteral only, and what can I expect as an improvement. I want to know how many times to repeat this treatment?

I am afraid that I have to let you down, but let me explain why. We have not used this product to treat polyneuropathy at this center. In part of course this is because we are mainly looking after children and young adults with Type 1 diabetes.

In addition, alpha-lipoic acid is not listed in either the Physicians Desk Reference, the hospital formulary or the Blue Cross/Blue Shield formulary. I though that perhaps it was not approved in the U.S. so I called the Drug Information Center and was told that there was indeed an oral preparation though not a parenteral one available. Finally, I looked in the abstracts from the National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE) and could find essentially nothing that gave the detail you required. You might try searching in PubMed or perhaps getting details from the German manufacturer.

DOB