Man Dies After Diabetic Wife Injects Him With Insulin

A disagreement resulted in a man's death after his diabetic wife injected him with insulin so he could understand what it's like to be hypoglycemic.

The man was found unconscious on July 28 in Côtes-d'Armor in France and died less than two weeks later, Ouest-France reported. His wife was indicted for attempted murder and placed in pre-trial detention as investigations continue.

"His wife, aged 59, told the gendarmes (police) that she administered insulin to him the day before going to bed, without him objecting in order to 'show him what it feels like to be in hypoglycemia' because he had told him that type 1 diabetes was a benign illness," said the public prosecutor of Saint-Brieuc, Nicolas Heitz.

"She called the firefighters when she woke up in the morning and noticed that her partner was unconscious. No argument had apparently preceded the injections."

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects the body's ability to control blood sugar levels by producing or responding to the hormone insulin, which is responsible for allowing sugar in the blood to enter our body's cells.

Without insulin, sugar begins to pile up in the bloodstream, which can cause serious health problems over time, like heart disease, vision loss and kidney problems. Diabetes is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Type I diabetes is caused by an inability to produce insulin, while type 2 diabetes is caused by an inability to respond to insulin efficiently. Both diseases can be managed by insulin injection to help control blood sugar levels (although patients with type 2 diabetes are usually only given this treatment if oral medications and lifestyle changes don't work).

However, too much insulin can result in too much sugar being removed from the blood, resulting in a state called hypoglycemia. Mild hypoglycemia may result in tiredness, lightheadedness, jitters and headaches. However, severe hypoglycemia can induce seizures and loss of consciousness.

Overdosing on insulin or taking insulin as a non-diabetic can result in severe hypoglycemia, which can eventually lead to brain damage, heart attacks and death.

It is unclear whether the man's wife knew of this risk when she gave him the fatal injection.

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