Polyneuropathy, diabetes, . . . and other stories

Polyneuropathy in people with diabetesPeripheral neuropathy is becoming less common in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, according to data on vibration perception threshold collected from 10 000 people attending a specialist diabetes centre in Denmark. Between 1996 and 2018, the incidence of distal symmetrical polyneuropathy fell around fivefold in middle aged people with type 1 diabetes and halved in older people with type 2 diabetes (Diabetes Care doi:10.2337/dc23-0312).Doubtful adviceIrritated by his dentist’s nagging about the importance of daily flossing, an experimental psychologist examined the underlying evidence—and found it to be thin. A recent Cochrane review concluded that“the evidence was low to very low certainty, and the effect sizes observed may not be clinically important” (Cochrane Database Syst Rev doi:10.1002/14651858.CD012018.pub2).Minerva felt sympathetic to his more general complaint that experts often project too much confidence, even when the science is faulty. Healthcare professionals should stop making recommendations based on dodgy…
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