Abstract

There is no evidence to suggest that individuals with type 1 diabetes adopt a different approach to their use of alcohol than the rest of the population. Nevertheless, in patients treated with insulin, alcohol has been implicated in up to one-fifth of hospital attendances with hypoglycemia (1). Recently, in a laboratory-based study, Turner et al. (2) reported that ingestion of alcohol with an evening meal increased the risk of hypoglycemia the next morning in patients with type 1 diabetes. However, this study was small, patients were admitted to a research unit, their "usual" insulin doses were reduced at meal times, and the overnight insulin was administered intravenously in a controlled environment. To date there has been no study examining the effect of alcohol in free-living patients with type 1 diabetes over a 24-h period.