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A diabetes monitor appears on an archive photo. (Photo credit: Getty Images)
Some type of medication used to treat diabetes may help manage the disease, but a new study recommends that doctors look for the disturbing signs of a serious flesh-eating infection in patients who take this medicine, or even kill it.
The study published in Annals of Internal Medicine examined the links between sodium glucose-cotransporter-2 inhibitors, used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and a genital infection called Fournier gangrene, which is "extremely rare but life threatening, "according to USA Today. .
The US Food and Drug Administration examined 55 patients – 39 men and 16 women – with the infection and observed that all had taken SGLT2 inhibitors between March 2013 and January of this year. Men and women all became "seriously ill," with a press release stating that there had been hospitalizations, surgeries, and other complications.
Three patients died of Fournier gangrene.
In comparison, when the researchers examined patients taking other types of anti-glycemic agents over a 35-year period, they only identified 19 cases of Fournier gangrene on the whole of this period, with two deaths noted.
Last year, the FDA had warned of symptoms of the disease, including "sensitivity, redness or swelling of the genitals or genital area up to the rectum", as well as Fever over 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit and "a general feeling of being unwell."
The authors of the study advise physicians to be alert to these signs in patients taking SGLT2 inhibitors and to have "a high index of suspicion to recognize them at an early stage". (The man's necrotizing fasciitis caused him to lose much of his penis.)
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