The risk of death from hypoglycaemia in diabetes

In 1989, a forensic biochemist giving evidence at an inquest in the UK claimed that he was aware of a number of deaths of young people with diabetes that were related to human insulin. The case generated considerable press interest and led the British Diabetic Association to commission a survey of all such deaths in the UK. The resulting publication identified a number of patients with a similar mode of sudden death and highlighted circumstantial evidence implicating nocturnal hypoglycaemia. The term ‘dead in bed syndrome’ was coined by Dr Ian Campbell in an accompanying editorial in Diabetic Medicine1.