Osteoporosis in Patients with Peripheral Neuropathies

Abstract

Peripheral neuropathy affects three types of nerves: sensory (impulses moving from the muscles to the spinal cord and the brain), motor (impulses moving from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body), and autonomic (nerves that control involuntary or semi-voluntary function such as heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion). Acquired, as opposed to hereditary neuropathy, has a number of causal factors including systemic diseases, medications and toxins, trauma, infections, autoimmune disorders, and vitamin imbalances. Its symptoms include numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, severe pain or the inability to feel pain at all, loss of coordination and reflexes, and muscle weakness. Functional challenges along with sensory and motor deficits contribute to falls in patients with a variety of peripheral neuropathies.Many of these patients may, in addition, have compromised bone due to many years of immobility and medications that impair bone preservation. Diabetes, the primary cause of peripheral neuropathy, will be considered in this chapter together with critical illness polymyopathy and its association with immobility and medications as well as two autoimmune disorders: Guillain–Barre syndrome and inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy.