Diabetic autonomic neuropathy is a serious and common complication of diabetes whose significance has not been fully appreciated. In this study, 50 non-cardiac diabetic patients were randomly selected to serve as cases and subjected to a standardized protocol of history, examination and a battery of autonomic function tests. 70% of them tested positive for autonomic dysfunction with its incidence increasing in direct proportion with increasing du-ration of the disease as well as with increasing hyperglycemia. An increase in the severity of autonomic dysfunction was also observed with high blood glucose levels. However no signifi-cant correlation of incidence with age and sex of the patient or type of the diabetes were es-tablished. The present study may help to appreciate the significance of diabetic autonomic neuropathy and its early detection as the same can encourage both the patient and the phy-sician to improve metabolic control and use therapies such as Angiotensin- converting en-zyme inhibitors, α- Lipoic acid and β- blockers proven to be effective with cardiac auto-nomic neuropathy.
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