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glucose intoklerance and Glivec

My husband is diabetic and regularly tests his blood sugar. Out of interest I took my blood sugar recently (we get tested at HH for everything except that I believe!) and to my horror the fasting level was 13.5 (normal level 3.9-6.0) This was after a large evening meal the night before, chocolate fudge cake and also Glivec taken with the evening meal. The following day and eating normally I took Glivec with lunch. The next day after fasting overnight blood sugar was 6.5 (a little high but not much and quite a drop) Two days later I took Glivec with a large evening meal and the fasting blood sugar level the following morning was 12.2. I then took Glivec with lunch and the following morning after fasting blood sugar was down to 6.5 again.
I rang HH to ask if Glivec could cause this or interfere with the absorption of blood sugar etc and could it have been to blame for the fluctuations and they are adamant it could not. They have advised me to see my GP for glucose intolerance testing etc, which I will do tomorrow.
Are there any diabetics or people with glucose intolerance who have experienced similar findings.
My PCR is undetectable,so the Glivec is really working well.

Des

My mother was dx about 7 years ago and has been on Glivec (400mg pd) for 2 years. She too is diabetic (Type II).

She had the reverse problem to the one you've experienced. Because Glivec caused nausea and vomiting at first, she ate / absorbed less food than normal. As a result, her blood sugar levels plummeted and she started to feel very light-headed. Indeed one night she was a whisker away from falling into a diabetic coma. We had weeks of detective work, trying to find out if the Glivec was causing this or her diabetic medicine. My gut feeling was that she was taking too large a dose of diabetic medicine and, sure enough - after doggedness on my part - that proved to be the case.

A more holistic approach to managing patients with a range of problems would have identified the risk of my mother developing the problem that she did.

I know this doesn't help you, but maybe others out there have experienced similar problems to those of my mother.

I do hope you find the answer.

Hi Des,

I have found an interesting article which suggests the reverse of what your experiencing i.e a beneficial effect for patients who are diabetic and who also take Glivec.

http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/full/22/22/4653

There also seem to be various other references along the same lines - try doing a google search - there are many references to Glivec + blood sugars

Best wishes
Paul

Paul hi

Thanks for posting the link. Although most of it was too technical I got the gist of the article. I was angry to think that this knowledge was available at the time my mother suffered a hypo. She's 81 and fiercely independent and, had it not been for an alarm system I'd set up for her, I'm of the opinion that she might not have survived, having passed out and bumped her head badly shsortly after she managed to activate the alarm.

However, my partner, who is a research biochemist, pointed out that medics get bombarded with so much research material that, if they read everything, they'd never have time to consult! I suppose somewhat unfortunately for us my mother sees a Haematologist at Portsmouth rather than an Oncologist - not that I'm really complaining about her treatment you understand.

I feel very very strongly that people with complex medical problems need an 'overseer' and that person should be the GP.

Rant over :)

Ruth