One pill of hypoglycemic drug caused a boy to become deaf and blind. Come and learn about hypoglycemia!

Seeing this news, many people will be suspicious: How can a pill be so toxic? Isn't it just hypoglycemia? How can it cause blindness, deafness, and inability to stand? Yaowa wants to say that everyone really underestimates hypoglycemia. If the dangerous time of high blood sugar is measured in years, then the dangerous time of low blood sugar can be measured in seconds! As the saying goes, "high blood sugar costs money, low blood sugar costs life." If it is not treated promptly and effectively, low blood sugar can even threaten life in a short period of time.

Symptoms of hypoglycemia include sweating, trembling, palpitations, hunger, anxiety, tension, weakness, pale complexion, etc. Glucose is the main energy source for brain tissues and organs. Since brain cells store limited sugar, it can only maintain brain cell activity for a few minutes. Therefore, once hypoglycemia occurs, symptoms of brain dysfunction may occur, mainly manifested as lack of concentration, dizziness, dullness, blurred vision, hallucinations, irritability, strange behavior, dance movements, tension spasms, coma, etc. If the condition develops seriously, the boy mentioned above may become deaf and blind.

Hypoglycemia in non-diabetic patients is often caused by lifestyle habits. For example, dieting, not eating staple foods to lose weight, too strict diet control, insufficient glucose supply in the body; or excessive exercise, consuming far more energy than intake. Special populations, such as obese people, may release a large amount of insulin due to the over-sensitivity of pancreatic β cells to glucose stimulation, leading to sudden hypoglycemia 2-3 hours after a meal.
The other type of hypoglycemia mainly occurs during the treatment of diabetic patients. There are many factors that lead to hypoglycemia in diabetic patients, such as overly strict blood sugar control, drug factors, blood sugar fluctuations, long-term diabetes, decreased awareness of hypoglycemia, severe liver dysfunction, impaired renal function, malignant tumors (including neuroendocrine tumors and non-islet cell tumors), excessive exercise, drinking, poor absorption of food nutrients, hypothyroidism, hypopituitarism and autoimmune insulin syndrome, etc. Among them, drugs are an important cause of hypoglycemia!

Drug-induced hypoglycemia should not be ignored. The boy in the previous article became blind and deaf because of the use of glipizide. Therefore, friends who use drugs to control blood sugar must be careful! In general, drugs that cause hypoglycemia are also divided into high-risk and low-risk:

1

High-risk category: hypoglycemic drugs that can cause hypoglycemia when used alone, such as insulin (human insulin, insulin analogs), insulin secretagogue sulfonylurea hypoglycemic drugs (glimepiride, glipizide), insulin secretagogue glitinide hypoglycemic drugs (repaglinide, nateglinide).

2

Low-risk category: hypoglycemic drugs that do not cause hypoglycemia when used alone, but can cause hypoglycemia when used in combination with other hypoglycemic drugs. Examples include metformin, α-glucosidase inhibitors (acarbose), thiazolidinedione hypoglycemic drugs (pioglitazone), dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors (vildagliptin), glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists (exenatide), sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (dapagliflozin), etc. In addition, there are some non-hypoglycemic drugs that either have a certain hypoglycemic effect themselves, or when used in combination, can enhance the effect of hypoglycemic drugs, thereby causing hypoglycemia.