Nutritive toe skin capillaries in middle-aged patients with diabetes mellitus.

Vital capillary microscopy was employed in a study of the toe dorsum capillaries in 92 middle-aged diabetics and 96 controls of similar age and sex distribution. As a general finding most vision fields in the same toe showed an almost identical capillary pattern. In 17% of the toes in the controls compared to about 35% of the toes in the patients the capillaries were dilated more than 3 times. Such findings were unrelated to blood glucose control and a number of metabolic variables. In the patients with non-insulin dependent diabetes an abnormal capillary pattern was particularly common in patients with evidence of obstructive arterial disease. Such a relationship was not observed in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes in whom changes in the capillary pattern to a higher extent may be related to other mechanisms such as neuropathy.