Diabetes drug boosts survival rate for melioidosis patients

(Source: Health Canal News, 12 March 2011)
"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. "Our Thai collaborators realised several years ago that diabetics are more likely to get melioidosis, but are less likely to die from their infection compared with non-diabetics. Our research shows that this improvement in survival is not an effect of diabetes itself, but of glibenclamide which is often prescribed to control the high blood sugar of diabetes." Read more