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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Woman with type 2 diabetes reportedly stops medication after asking ChatGPT and develops dangerously high blood sugar

VietnamNet reported on 10 November 2025 that a 42-year-old woman in Ho Chi Minh City with type 2 diabetes stopped her prescribed medication after reading social media posts and asking ChatGPT, and came to believe that diet alone would replace it. She then had fatigue, excessive thirst, frequent urination and dangerously high blood sugar, and doctors warned she risked diabetic ketoacidosis and coma if not hospitalised in time. The article does not quote the ChatGPT reply.

AI system
ChatGPT
OpenAI
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
10 November 2025
Event location
Vietnam
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Medical DeteriorationTreatment Disruption
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Health
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
2 claims: 2 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

Reported harm

The woman reportedly developed symptoms and dangerously high blood sugar after stopping diabetes medication and was warned of ketoacidosis risk.

What remains unknown

  • The event date is not given. A 2025 start is inferred from the 10 November 2025 article date and is not stated by the source. The diabetes diagnosis was 'over six months ago' relative to that date, so the medication stop fell after that diagnosis, at an unstated month.
  • The ChatGPT reply is not quoted. Social media posts are a second stated influence.
  • Hospital admission is implied by the doctors' warning ("if she hadn't been hospitalized in time") and is not stated as a fact with dates or duration.
  • Outcome after treatment is not reported.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. VietnamNet reports the woman's consultation with ChatGPT alongside social media posts, then the medication stop and the clinical effects, with the treating hospital doctor quoted. The account is unverified and the chat was not seen.

2 claims: 2 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A 42-year-old woman in Ho Chi Minh City with type 2 diabetes stopped her prescribed medication after reading social media posts and asking ChatGPT, believing healthy eating and cutting sugar and carbohydrates would remove the need for it.

Causal attribution. The article names two influences (social media posts and ChatGPT) and does not quote what ChatGPT said. The causal role of ChatGPT is therefore not separable from the posts.

  • vietnamnet.vn(opens in new tab) supports · English
    after reading social media posts and asking ChatGPT for advice, she believed that simply eating healthy and cutting out sugar and carbs would eliminate the need for medication. She then stopped taking her medication.
  • vietnamnet.vn(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
    sau đó bà đọc thông tin trên mạng xã hội và hỏi qua công cụ trí tuệ nhân tạo ChatGPT (AI), tin rằng chỉ cần ăn uống lành mạnh, hạn chế đường và tinh bột là có thể ngừng thuốc
Reported After stopping she had fatigue, excessive thirst, frequent urination and dangerously high blood sugar, and doctors warned she was at risk of diabetic ketoacidosis and coma if she had not been hospitalised in time.

Causal attribution. The article attributes these effects to stopping the medication. The treating doctor is quoted in the same article. The article does not state that DKA occurred.

  • vietnamnet.vn(opens in new tab) supports · English
    she experienced fatigue, excessive thirst, frequent urination, and dangerously high blood sugar levels.
  • vietnamnet.vn(opens in new tab) supports · English
    doctors warned she was at risk of severe complications, including diabetic ketoacidosis and potentially falling into a coma if she hadn’t been hospitalized in time
  • vietnamnet.vn(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
    Sau khi tự ý dừng thuốc, bà D. mệt mỏi, khát nhiều, tiểu nhiều, đường huyết tăng cao ngoài tầm kiểm soát

Sources

2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Vietnamese original read by an AI model without human translation review. The English edition (s2) is VietnamNet's own English version of the same article and was used for wording; locators from both editions match the article text. Applies to s1.

English edition of the same VietnamNet article (published 10/11/2025 15:31 GMT+07:00). Applies to s2.

Event countries: Vietnam. Affected-person countries: Vietnam. Court countries: Unknown.

VietnamNet gives the patient's residence as a ward of Ho Chi Minh City. The article does not state where the hospital is or where the ChatGPT conversation took place.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: VietnamNet reports the woman's consultation with ChatGPT alongside social media posts, then the medication stop and the clinical effects, with the treating hospital doctor quoted. The account is unverified and the chat was not seen. The event date is not stated by the source, so the case is published undated.

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One woman is reported harmed.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Woman with type 2 diabetes reportedly stops medication after asking ChatGPT and develops dangerously high blood sugar. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-ho-chi-minh-city-diabetic-woman-stops-medication-chatgpt-high-blood-sugar

BibTeX

@misc{2025_ho_chi_minh_city_diabetic_woman_stops_medication_chatgpt_high_blood_sugar,
  title = {Woman with type 2 diabetes reportedly stops medication after asking ChatGPT and develops dangerously high blood sugar},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-ho-chi-minh-city-diabetic-woman-stops-medication-chatgpt-high-blood-sugar}
}

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