Bruce Stephens
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
I will ask how they decide what Insulin's to put people on when I am at the clinic next week and I will let you know what they say. I also think it's probably a cost exercise! At the moment both insulins seem to be agreeing with and working for me so I'm not too worried.
Yes, it would be interesting to know.
As another hunch, the newer bolus insulins (like Novorapid and especially FIASP) have a sharper activity profile than previous ones (which were a bit more spread out). That's good because they have a more predictable effect, but maybe initially that might make them a bit more dangerous (that is, with a bit higher risk of hypos (albeit predictable hypos))?
Though it's just as likely that they're not sure why they do that: it's just what they've always done (and it saves a bit of money and doesn't seem to do any harm, and they're accustomed to helping patients using those insulins and (presumably) migrating to others later).
(I remember listening to an interview with Ben Goldacre and others about first-line statin choice: there are apparently two, the cheap generic simvastatin and a more costly other one which I forget. The question was whether one was better in some way than the other (given that some GP surgeries go for the more expensive one---maybe they could just as well use simvastatin), and it turned out nobody had any idea.)