 RE: Favorite insulin
Personally, I had terrible luck with Lantus, and the reason is because I have almost no basal insulin needs except for overnight (after 30 years with type 1, I still have a fairly high c-peptide). I personally found Lente worked best for me, but since its no longer available, I've switched to NPH overnight and that seems to work well. (I tried pumping, but did not care for it) However, its only a matter of time before all forms of human insulin are removed from the market. Novo Nordisk's CEO stated his intention to "migrate their portfolio" from unpatented human insulin to patent-protected insulin analogs by 2010. This year, we saw Lilly remove Lente and Ultralente from the market.
Its worth noting that insulin analogs may have been widely adopted, but they are no more "human" than porcine (pig) insulin. If you examine the genetic structure of some of the analogs (I am thinking of Novolog, for example), Novolog differs from human insulin by 2 amino acids, which is the same difference as porcine insulin differs from human insulin. However, unlike porcine insulin, analogs exist nowhere in nature. |