Effectiveness of Vitamin D and Vitamin B Supplementation Therapy in Diabetic Neuropathic Pain Standard Therapy

The chronic complication from diabetes mellitus (DM) is painful diabetic neuropathy, and the treatment with standard therapy is inefficient. Furthermore, vitamin B combination is effective as a neuropathy treatment due to nerve repair acceleration by enhancing regeneration and restoring function, while individuals with type 2 DM are inseparable from vitamin D deficiency. This study aimed to measure diabetic neuropathy pain reduction in patients with type 2 DM by administration of additional vitamin D to standard therapy. This was a quasi-experimental study employing non-equivalent control group method on 77 patients selected using consecutive sampling at Bethesda Hospital Yogyakarta between December 2019 and February 2020. In addition, the subjects consisted of 48 men and 29 women, and were divided into 4 therapy groups executed within 1–3 months comprising (I) symptomatic therapy only; (II) symptomatic combination therapy with vitamin B; (III) symptomatic combination therapy with vitamin D; and (IV) symptomatic combination therapy with vitamin B-vitamin D. The pain assessment employed Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) prior and after administration, and demographic characteristics data between the 4 groups lacked noteworthy differences. The results indicated decreased pain intensity after therapy with the mean VAS in group I from 53.36±14.65 to 42.27±17.16, group II from 50.56±12.11 to 13.89±14.61, group III from 50.77±15.98 to 19.23±18.09, and group IV from 54.55±16.35 to 7.27±6.47. However, group administered with symptomatic combination therapy with vitamin D revealed higher significant improvement, while substantial pain intensity reduction was indicated from symptomatic therapy combined with vitamin B and vitamin D.