Drug Combo can cause Diabetes

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20515-common-drug-combo-increases-diabetes-risk.html


A recent finding of a drug combination, one being an antidepressant and the other being one to lower blood cholesterol may cause people to develop diabetes. Different drug combinations can be seriously harmful or even fatal and Nicholas Tatonetti and Russ Altman from Stanford University went to Adverse Event Reporting System(AERS) database to find such combinations. The researchers look for drugs that caused blood sugar to rise, which is a symptom linked to diabetes, but they found nothing. Then they looked for combos that were involved in diabetes, and searched the AERS for side effects linked to these drugs. One combination was bold: paroxetine(antidepressant) and pravastatin(used to lower blood cholesterol). They then got together with researchers from Harvard and Vanderbilt to study medical records of people given these drugs together. The records showed that patients given both had a rise in blood sugar, especially people who were already diabetic.

I think that this finding is huge! I also think that researchers should absolutely look more into this and reveal which drugs can cause more harm than good. If a combination can cause diabetes than they could cause worse things like stroke or heart attack and lead to more serious cases. The point of drugs is to help patients recover and get better, not give them diabetes and heart attacks. So, in my opinion this needs to be researched heavily and prevented.