People with diabetes-related nerve damage may find pain is relieved by taking a compound related to the popular supplement L-carnitine -- provided the treatment is started early -- according to a re-analysis of data from two large clinical trials.Acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC) is not currently approved in the US for treating nerve pain, “but it is used widely for painful neuropathy in patients with diabetes and AIDS in Europe,” Dr. Anders A. F. Sima from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.The original two trials -- one conducted in Europe and the other in the US and Canada -- involved over 1000 patients with diabetic neuropathy who were given ALC (500 or 1000 milligrams taken three times a day) or an inactive placebo for 52 weeks.Those tests showed ALC had no significant effect on nerve conduction velocity, an indicator of improvement in nerve damage, but when Sima’s group looked into the data they found certain patients did benefit.Apparently, ALC at the higher dose significantly alleviated pain in the 27 percent of patients who reported pain as “the most bothersome symptom” at the beginning of the studies, the team notes in the medical journal Diabetes Care.
