Other Causes of Reactive Hypoglycemia

Hormone deficiency

Fasting hypoglycemia can also be caused by hormone deficiencies in the adrenal, pituitary or thyroid glands. Deficiency of the Human Growth Hormone can also cause hypoglycemia. This is rare and almost always appears in infants and children.

Insulin is also a hormone, and the functions of all of the hormones are interdependent. Treatment by supplementing with the deficient hormones will cure the hypoglycemia.

Drugs

The most common cases of drug-induced hypoglycemia occur when diabetics take too much insulin for their food or activity levels. It also happens occasionally when non-diabetics abuse insulin or other drugs (e.g. sulfonylureas or metformin) normally used to control blood sugar in diabetes.

The next most common drug seen to cause hypoglycemia is alcohol in both alcoholics and non-alcoholics. In alcoholics, fasting hypoglycemia occurs when the liver becomes damaged and no is no longer to properly perform its role in sugar metabolism.

Other drugs sometimes implicated in hypoglycemia are listed here.

• Pentamidine - used to treat certain kinds of infections. Also used in preventing a type of pneumonia in HIV patients.
• Beta-blockers - a class of heart drugs.
• Quinine (in high doses) - Quinine is the usual treatment for malaria, and is more likely to cause hypoglycemia in pregnant women being treated for malaria.
• Quinidine - occasionally used to treat malaria, but more often used to treat heart rhythm irregularities.
• Salicylates and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs) - These are more likely to cause a problem in children.
• Sulpha drugs (sulfonamides) - antibiotics used to treat infections.
• Disopyramide - a cardiac depressant used to treat heart beat irregularities
• Propoxyphene - a pain reliever
• Haloperidol - an anti-psychotic drug
  

Treating drug-induced hypoglycemia is fairly straight-forward if you know the cause, but diagnosing hypoglycemia, first of all, and then figuring out that the patient has been taking a drug that affects blood sugar can be very difficult. In diabetics, insulin overdose is the first thing to check, but often the problem is much less obvious.

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Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, so please don't use these articles to diagnose yourself. They are only intended to provide information.