Insulin Autoimmune Syndrome

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Insulin Autoimmune Syndrome possibly caused by alpha lipoic acid.” (Intern Med. 2007;46(5):237-9). Authors are Takeuchi Y, Miyamoto T, Kakizawa T et al., from the Department of Geriatrics, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Japan. Insulin Autoimmune Syndrome (IAS) is a rare disease characterized by hypoglycemia and autoantibodies to insulin without prior insulin administration. Here, the authors report a case of IAS associated with alpha lipoic acid (ALA). The patient is a 55-year-old man. He began to complain of hypoglycemic symptoms after taking ALA. He lost consciousness in the late postprandial period and blood glucose was found to be 27 mg/dl. A high insulin level and high titers of insulin antibodies were detected. As ALA comes to be used widely, the incidence of IAS due to ALA might increase. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.