• Please Remember: Members are only permitted to share their own experiences. Members are not qualified to give medical advice. Additionally, everyone manages their health differently. Please be respectful of other people's opinions about their own diabetes management.
  • We seem to be having technical difficulties with new user accounts. If you are trying to register please check your Spam or Junk folder for your confirmation email. If you still haven't received a confirmation email, please reach out to our support inbox: support.forum@diabetes.org.uk

Any support for generic Levemir?

Understanding your body's basal needs as well as the activity profile of the basal insulin's available is key to getting a good foundation for your diabetes management with MDI.
 
helli said:
How many of those people who don’t qualify because their control is too good use Levemir? And how many of them will have worse control once Levemir is discontinued?
Click to expand...
My control has been much better since moving from Lantus to Levemir and I don't qualify for a pump/HCL for that reason - I change my evening insulin on an almost daily basis depending on what I've been up to (was umpiring hockey for the whole afternoon today with a couple of beers afterwards so will reduce my evening dose by 2 units - not really possible with Tresiba I'd imagine as it lasts much longer) - not looking forward to the change tbh
 
rebrascora said:
Really interesting to hear that you are finding Tresiba is working well for you @JJay. Did you have much difference in morning and night doses of Levemir as that is my main issue. Often I need none on an evening if I have been particularly active but I need a lot in the morning and I am not sure how I could achieve that with Tresiba.

@Robin I will be interested to see how you get on with Tresiba as we have some similarities with our diabetes management. I believe you reduce your evening dose for alcohol as well as exercise, so I will be interested to hear how you manage that with Tresiba.
Click to expand...
Generally speaking it was a two-thirds/one-third split, but I couldn’t in all honesty ever relate my “needs” to my activities so precisely as you seem to be able to do! I could quite literally be having 6 units one night, and going hypo, 5 units the next and shooting up to the teens. And the next two nights could be the other way round, all with little appreciable difference in the pattern of my days.

I chose to inject at breakfast and at dinner time, those being slightly more regular than my bedtimes! Now, it’s quite astonishing how liberated I feel not having to stick that extra jab in before dinner.

Edited to add: And with Tresiba I can still use Novopens to check my doses and record them in Librelink
 
Last edited:
I used Lantus for several years but it seemed to become unstable and I had two very bad night time hypos . As a result I was switched Levemir and have found it very good. In both cases I have been having two injections a day. Because of my experiences with Lantus I can't contemplate using it, or anything like it, again but I'm suspicious of anything that claims to last 24+ hours so don't look forward to the inevitable change. The options don't seem all that clear to me at the moment but clearly I will have to adjust to a different regime with what seems to be available.
 
Merluza said:
I used Lantus for several years but it seemed to become unstable and I had two very bad night time hypos . As a result I was switched Levemir and have found it very good. In both cases I have been having two injections a day. Because of my experiences with Lantus I can't contemplate using it, or anything like it, again but I'm suspicious of anything that claims to last 24+ hours so don't look forward to the inevitable change. The options don't seem all that clear to me at the moment but clearly I will have to adjust to a different regime with what seems to be available.
Click to expand...
If it helps, my chosen replacement at the moment will be Humulin I. The options I was initially given by the consultant were Lantus, Toujeo or Tresiba. I had already done my homework and didn't feel any of those would meet my needs and after discussion with my consultant he agreed that an NPH insulin like Humulin would better suit me and provide the flexibility I wanted. His only concern is that those older insulin's may well also be discontinued sooner or later but I am staying on Levemir as long as it is available. There may be a small amount of stockpiling going on in my household in that respect within what my prescription allows which will hopefully tide me over an extra month or 3 beyond supplies running out.

I don't know if I will like Humulin I anywhere near as much as Levemir but on paper it looks like the best fit, so we shall see when the time comes. My new consultant is absolutely great and is really patient centred so I feel like he understands me and will work with me, even if it means a non standard approach.
 
Many thanks, that's really helpful and it does look like a contender. I don't get to see my consultant until October so I can fret about this for a while yet but I will begin work on the Levemir stockpile.
 
My next appointment is in January next year so I am expecting stocks to last at least that long, even before I hit my little stockpile as I haven't had a replacement added to my repeat list yet, but I was just wondering how much support there might be on the forum for a generic Determir, so that if I was to write to pharmaceutical companies and ask if there was any possibility they might consider producing one, I could say that I had canvassed others on the Diabetes UK forum and there was interest/support for the idea, but it seems that is probably not the case from the replies so far.

I find it surprising that Lantus which I believe is an older insulin than Levemir continues and it already has to compete with generics like Semglee and Abasaglar and yet Levemir which is only just coming out of patent now and doesn't have any generics is being discontinued...... but I do understand the need for factory space/resources for the likes of Mounjaro is the underlying factor as that is where the money is, especially if they make Mounjaro available as an over the counter prescription which I believe there is talk of, as the market is likely to escalate even more dramatically.
 
Levemir is meant to be available until the end of next year and I assume that’s why nobody has mentioned it to me yet. You obviously have my support if you want to write to any of the pharmaceutical companies. Maybe someone is working on it but are waiting until the patent has expired. As Levemir has apparently stopped being available in the US you would expect it to appear there in generic form.
 
There’s a petition re Levemir. It’s US based, I think, but they’d collected quite a few signatures. I saw it when we were discussing Levemir and the isophanes previously @rebrascora
 
Tagging on...

Dafne is pretty much based around moving people on to levemir, and i wouldn't mind betting the degree of improvement after dafne goes down.
Mind you, i am not convinced they should be waiting as long as they do to offer dafne...by the time you get it you've either figured it out, or risk having got into bad habits that take some time to overturn.
 
I would have hoped someone would snap up the large market....it will take a while before the majority are on pumps, and like as not many countries won't be pumping in the near future
 
Tdm said:
Mind you, i am not convinced they should be waiting as long as they do to offer dafne...by the time you get it you've either figured it out, or risk having got into bad habits that take some time to overturn.
Click to expand...
The "time to dafne" seems to vary. It may also depend upon availability.
It only took my clinic 12 years after my diagnosis to offer their course to me. Until then, the only carb counting I had been taught was "give 1 unit insulin to 15 g carbs a try and see what happens." Thankfully, it kept me alive without too many hypos and an "acceptable" HBA1c.
After that time, the only thing I learn on my course was about diabetes complications and that was because there were others on the course with problems not anything that the presenters taught.
Which brings me to the other thing - we all learn differently and at different paces. One person would soak up all the information if they went on DAFNE within a month of diagnosis whereas someone else would hate being with others and a third person would benefit from 6 months of "bedding in time" before the course. In an ideal world, the training should be available at a time and in a way that suits the patient not the clinic.

And maybe a "knowledge top up" every couple of years to stop bad habits forming and for new techniques to be taught.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top