The circulation in diabetes, from HL523 to the NO era.

Abstract

In 1955, F R Barany, a Swedish research physician interested in diabetes, summarised his dissertation (Acta Med Scand 1955; suppl 1304: 127) with the words "The ultimate cause of the various abnormal vascular reactions in diabetes might be assumed to be the cause of diabetic neuropathy in which autonomic pathways are the first to be destroyed...". That diabetes might involve a microcirculatory disease affecting the autonomic nervous system may be more relevant to the following reminiscence about the agent HL523 than I realised.