GAED Medal Lecture 2022: Challenging the Dogma in Diabetic Neuropathy and Beyond

Abstract

Dogma, according to the Britannica Dictionary, is ”a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted.” Thus, in 2001, the heretical idea that corneal confocal microscopy (CCM)—an ophthalmic instrument—could be used to assess neurological disease truly challenged the dogma. The repurposing of CCM to study diabetic neuropathy and other neurodegenerative diseases is a wonderful illustration of being in the right time and place and having honest and open conversations between very different medical disciplines to 'challenge the dogma.' The Gulf Association of Diabetes and Endocrinology (GAED) Medal Lecture in 2022 and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Camillo Golgi Prize in 2019 have enabled me to tell my personal story in relation to the past, present, and future of CCM as a clinical tool to diagnose and predict neurodegeneration and identify nerve regeneration in clinical trials of new therapies for peripheral and central neurodegenerative diseases.