Warning to millions of Brits on common medication over increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest

Millions of Brits with type 2 diabetes could be at higher risk of sudden cardiac arrest if they taken certain commonly prescribed medications, a study shows.

More than 4.3 people in the UK live with diabetes, with 90 per cent of them suffering from type 2, according to Diabetes UK.

AlamyType 2 diabetes sufferers taking certain antibiotic, anti-psychotic and prokinetic drugs could be at higher risk of suffering a sudden cardiac arrest[/caption]

That amounts of almost 3.9 million Brits. The charity estimated that about 850,000 million people don’t know they have the condition.

Now research conducted at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers has shown that type 2 diabetes sufferers taking some commonly prescribed antibiotic, anti-psychotic and prokinetic drugs are higher risk sudden cardiac arrest – this is when the heart stops pumping blood around the body.

Many common drugs, including some prokinetic, antibiotic and anti-psychotic medications, change the functioning of the heart’s electrical system.

This is known as QT-prolongation, so the drugs are described as being QTc-prolonging.

QTc-prolonging prokinetics include domperidone, the research team said.

Marcolides and fluoroquinolones are antibiotics that fit into that category. As for QTc-prolonging anti-psychotics, haloperidol is one of them.

Prokinetic medicines are used to treat gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and vomiting.

According to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year and only one in 10 sufferers survive it.

People with type 2 diabetes are twice as likely of suffering the deadly heart event, but it can be hard to predict, the research team said. This especially the case if sufferers don’t have a history of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Lead author Peter Harms, from Amsterdam UMC, and his team assessed GP records of 689 people with type 2 diabetes who suffered sudden cardiac arrest between 2010 and 2019.

Just over half of them – 352 – had a history of CVD, while the remaining 337 didn’t.

The team compared those to the health records of 3,230 controls.

The research team identified several factors that increased the risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

In people who didn’t have a history of CVD, taking QTc-prolonging anti-psychotic medication increased their risk of sudden cardiac arrest by 187 per cent, while QTc-prolonging antibiotic medication upped their risk by 66 per cent.

Other factors that increased their risk of the deadly heart event included having low blood sugar (150 per cent), severely high blood pressure (121 per cent) and having high cholesterol (64 per cent).

But taking QTc-prolonging prokinetic medication increased the risk of type 2 diabetes sufferers suffering a sudden cardiac arrest by 66 per cent – this was regardless of whether they had a history of CVD.

Commenting on the findings – which were presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Hamburg, Germany – Mr Harms said: “GPs will already be aware that classic cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure raise the risk of sudden cardiac arrest in people with type 2 diabetes.

“However, the link with low fasting glucose and antibiotic, antipsychotic and prokinetic medication is less well-known.

“Our results underline the need for GPs to be aware of the hazards of too strict glycaemic control and the prescription of commonly used antibiotics, anti-psychotics and prokinetics,” he added.

Glycaemic control refers to maintaining blood glucose levels within desirable levels to prevent both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia – low blood sugar and high blood sugar.

It comes after research from the University of Cambridge suggested that being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before you’re 30 could slash your life expectancy by 14 years.