Diabetes complications and their potential prevention: aldose reductase inhibition and other approaches.

Despite recent advances both in the chemistry and molecular pharmacology of antidiabetic drugs, diabetes still remains a life-threatening disease, which tends to spread all over the world. The clinical profile of diabetic subjects is often worsened by the presence of several long-term complications, namely neuropathy, nephropathy, retinopathy, and cataract. Several attempts have been made to prevent or at least to delay them. The most relevant are reported in this review, including the development of compounds acting as aldose reductase inhibitors, anti-advanced glycation end-product drugs, free radical scavengers, vasoactive agents, essential fatty acid supplementation, and neurotropic growth factors.