A drug developed at Kansas University has the potential to stop a debilitating diabetes condition after successful trials in mice.

Rick Dobrowsky, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, and Brian Blagg, professor of medicinal chemistry, found that the new drug can stop and occasionally reverse the condition — known as diabetic peripheral neuropathy, or DPN — in mice.

DPN can cause pain in the extremities, and is the second-leading cause of amputations, after injuries.

The researchers said that of the approximately 24 million diabetics in the United States, about 60 percent of them suffer from DPN at some point.

The drug, KU-32, also showed it could restore sensory neuron function to damaged nerve tissue, a characteristic that neither of the current FDA-approved drugs to treat DPN have shown.