Diabetes drug improves survival from life-threatening infectious disease

Scientists have identified a diabetes drug which halves the mortality rate of a deadly infectious disease found throughout Southeast Asia and Northern Australia. Melioidosis, caused by a soil dwelling bacterium (Burkholderia pseudomallei) that is present in certain regions of the world, results in severe infections include bloodstream infections and pneumonia. Death results in up to 40% of affected individuals despite antibiotic treatment. New research by a multinational team from the United Kingdom, Thailand, Singapore and The Netherlands, however, has found that people taking the diabetes drug glibenclamide (called glyburide in the US) have half the mortality of other patients with melioidosis. The investigators were supported by the Wellcome Trust Thailand/Laos Major Overseas Programme to study 1160 patients with melioidosis in northeast Thailand, and found that death from melioidosis was only 28% in diabetic patients taking glyburide, compared to a mortality rate of nearly one half in other patient groups including those on other diabetes medication and non-diabetics. A study of white blood cells from people taking glibenclamide, performed by collaborators at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, also showed less evidence of activity relating to inflammation. "Roughly half of all patients with melioidosis have diabetes as a risk factor," says Dr. Gavin Koh, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of Cambridge and first author of the study.