Published 26 May 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1792
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:a1792

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Hypoglycaemia induced by second generation antipsychotic agents in schizophrenic non-diabetic patients

Yutaro Suzuki, psychiatrist and medical researcher1, Junzo Watanabe, psychiatrist and medical researcher1, Naoki Fukui, psychiatrist and medical researcher1, Vural Ozdemir, clinical pharmacologist and bioethics/science policy researcher2, Toshiyuki Someya, psychiatrist and medical researcher1

1 Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan, 2 Département de Médecine Sociale et Préventive, Programmes de Bioéthique, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Correspondence to: T Someya psy@med.niigata-u.ac.jp

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We report three cases of hypoglycaemia in non-diabetic non-obese Japanese inpatients who had schizophrenia and were being treated with a second generation antipsychotic. The clinical findings of hypoglycaemia emerged typically 2-3 hours after meals in all patients during escalation of the dose of second generation antipsychotic. No other antipsychotic or concomitant drug with a metabolic effect was coadministered.

Case 1—A 27 year old woman who took 400 mg of quetiapine a day complained of dizziness, tremor, and palpitations on day 112 of her inpatient stay. These symptoms worsened with a 600 mg daily dose of quetiapine (day 132). At this point, her blood glucose three hours after lunch was 3.2 mmol/l. Her symptoms (tremor, irritability) resolved after oral sugar intake. An oral glucose tolerance test during quetiapine treatment (600 mg a day, day 154), found further evidence of hypoglycaemia (tableGo). We replaced quetiapine with perospirone (day 167), and . . . [Full text of this article]


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