Anne-Sophie Wattiez, David André Barrière, Amandine Dupuis and Christine Courteix
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is the most common clinical complication of diabetes mellitus, and can be related to type 1 as well as type 2. To date, this highly invalidating neurological impairment is insufficiently known, understood and the treatments proposed by physicians are still empirical and poorly efficient. Animal rodent modeling of clinical DPN offers a powerful tool in order to understand diabetes-mediated peripheral nerve injury. The majority of studies which have investigated DPN in rodent used the streptozotocin-induced rat model which reproduces metabolic lesional mechanisms of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) and usual symptoms of evoked pain. Although the clinical relevance of this model is challenged due to 1) a high prevalence of type 2- compared to type 1-diabetes in the adult population, 2) the important alteration of the general clinical state of the animals and 3) the lack of morphological changes in peripheral nerves, many studies have contributed to a better pathophysiological and pharmacological understanding of the DPN. In this review we investigated rodent models of T1DM and T2DM, their contributions for a better understanding of DPN, molecular targets and pharmacological strategies, which could be used for the enhancement of clinical care. Finally, we proposed possible ways to improve animal modeling.
