Overdose cure hands lifeline to thousands of diabetic patients

A MEDICAL breakthrough has given Scotland’s 200,000 sufferers of type-2 diabetes fresh hope of avoiding heart disease – the major cause of reduced life expectancy in sufferers.

Scientists at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) have discovered that a drug used in reversing the effects of paracetamol overdose has the potential to reduce the risk of heart disease in patients.

The discovery was made by a team led by Professor Ian Megson at the University’s Department of Diabetes and Cardiovascular Science in Inverness.

Aspirin, the drug normally used to prevent heart attacks, is less effective for people with diabetes before heart disease has been diagnosed.

The research investigated the drug N-acetylcysteine, used in overdose cases, and its effect on blood platelets, a vital component of blood clots that underpin heart attacks and some forms of strokes. It found that, as a result, the platelets have depleted reserves of a key antioxidant called glutathione in patients with type-2 diabetes.

The work, published in the journal Diabetologia, found that daily treatment of patients with the drug brought platelet glutathione back to normal and reduced clot formation.

Professor Megson said: “Aspirin has long been recognised to be useful in helping to prevent heart attacks, but it has recently been found to be largely ineffective in patients with diabetes before there is evidence of heart damage.

“There is an urgent need to find new drugs as alternatives to aspirin in this vulnerable group of patients. This study represents an important early step in finding just such a drug: we are now in the hunt for further funding to take the therapy to larger 
trials to establish its potential in patients with both type-1 and type-2 diabetes”.

Researchers were also encouraged by an added advantage of the study which discovered the drug only worked in patients with low glutathione levels, meaning doctors knew exactly which patients would be helped most and could therefore target the drug more effectively.

Professor Sandra MacRury, professor of clinical diabetes at UHI, said: “Patients with type-2 diabetes have an increased risk of all types of vascular disease even when high blood pressure and cholesterol have been treated, and we know that aspirin is really only useful in patients who have already had a heart attack, stroke or circulation problem.

“The important finding we have made in this study raises the possibility of preventing these problems by offering a new treatment to patients at risk at an earlier stage.”

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at Diabetes UK Scotland, said: “We would encourage a larger trial conducted over a longer period and including a range of people with poor and good control of their diabetes before speculating about what such treatments will be and what benefits they will bring.”

Statistics in the annual Scottish diabetes survey shows a total of 247,278 people in Scotland now have diabetes, almost 5 per cent of the population, with numbers increasing by about 10,000 a year. The majority have type-2 diabetes.