Carbutamide--the first oral antidiabetic. A retrospect.

This work describes the history of the first oral antidiabetic in East and West Germany. M. Janbon and A. Loubatières reported experimental and clinical findings about a blood sugar-decreasing effect of a sulphonamide derivate, sulphoisopropyl thiodiazol (1942). These findings, however, did not prove to be useful in the treatment of diabetes. In 1952 the author found a series of hypoglycemic shocks with the sulfonamid-urea derivate carbutamdide during clinical tests of infectious diseases. These were reported to the pharmaceutical company Von Heyden in Dresden. The head chemist E. Haack went with my files from East to West Germany, to Boehringer Mannheim. Without mentioning the synthesis in Dresden, he synthesized carbutamide in Mannheim. The hypoglycemic effect was rediscovered by his friend H. Franke together with J. Fuchs. It took twenty years until the results of the author's research were officially acknowledged.