Jeniffer Mathews: This may look easy, but for Greg Stone, walking is becoming a challenging chore.
Greg Stone: I started losing feeling in my toes. They started feeling numb.
Jeniffer Mathews: Greg has diabetes. He also has neuropathy or nerve damage, a complication that affects 60% of diabetics.
Greg Stone: I'm losing more and more feeling all the time. The tingling gets worse and then after the tingling, things get numb, and then after a while, you have no feeling at all.
Jeniffer Mathews: Doctor Aaron Vinik from Eastern Virginia Medical School hopes this drug will change Greg's future.
Aaron Vinik: This compound improves the blood supply to the nerves, so it addresses the basic biology of nerve damage.
Jeniffer Mathews: By improving blood supply, PKC inhibitors slow the progression of neuropathy and even reverse it.
Aaron Vinik: Currently, there is no treatment for diabetic neuropathy, so this is the first in its class of compounds that would address the underlying disease.
Jeniffer Mathews: The drug could potentially prevent foot ulcers in diabetics, which would ultimately prevent amputations. There are 85,000 amputations each year. Most of them are a result of neuropathy. Greg applauds the research.
Greg Stone: I think we're on the edge of a whole new generation of potential drugs that are coming that will see the day when neuropathy can be treated.
Jeniffer Mathews: And he's looking forward to the future.
Greg Stone: One of these days, there's hope that someday again I can regain the feeling that I've already lost.
Jeniffer Mathews: This is Jeniffer Mathews reporting.
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