Oxybutynin for Diabetic Complications

Abstract

To the Editor.— Though a number of drugs have been used for diabetic sweating and diabetic diarrhea, often the drugs are either insufficient or associated with disabling side effects.1,2Oxybutynin is an antimuscarinic receptorblocking agent that also possesses intrinsic antispasmodic properties.3It has been available since 1955 and has been most widely used in the treatment of bladder spasm. Mixed results were reported when this agent was used for a variety of nondiabetic diarrheal diseases.4In 1988, LeWitt5reported a serendipitous observation when oxybutynin was given to a patient with congenital absence of the corpus callosum and bladder spasm: the severe sweating to which patients with this syndrome are prone dramatically resolved under the influence of oxybutynin. On the basis of this report, we attempted use of oxybutynin in a patient with diabetes who had severe post-gustatory sweating. We then gave it to two other patients