By and large, like most complications of diabetes, the patients with severe diabetes and uncontrolled blood sugars and with diabetes of long duration, tend to get more complications than others. However there is a tremendous variability and sometimes patients may even develop a neuropathy before their diabetes has actually been discovered. Other patients will go many, many years with diabetes and not develop neuropathy. In the EMG laboratory neuropathy is tested for by applying small electrical shocks to the nerves and recording the activity from muscles or from the same nerve some distance away. Sometimes this test is accompanied by a fine needle being inserted in one or more muscles.
Some neuropathies tend to get better on their own without any specific treatment.
Proximal diabetic neuropathy and truncal neuropathy are two examples. Both are painful conditions and so the pain has to be treated but ultimately within weeks or months the nerves repair themselves and the weakness and numbness subside. However the commonest of the diabetic neuropathies, diabetic polyneuropathy, does not recover on its own and nor are there any medications that can cure or halt its progression. However it has been shown convincingly that very good diabetes control will tend to prevent or delay the development of neuropathy. It will also tend to slow the worsening of the neuropathy.