Moving from Lantus to Levemir

[linda_b]

Hi all,

After years of expressing my hatred(!) of Lantus and carrying out all the basal tests and printing endless reports I have been moved onto Levemir.
I was told to expect a few days of up and downs blood sugar wise as after 15 years on lantus this is a huge change to my body.
So previously I was on 16 units of lantus at 9pm. My DSN has split this with the Levemir to 8 units at 8am and 8 units at 8pm.
Historically I've always had an issue with a blood sugar raise between 8pm and 10pm. They can be stable up until that point and then they'll rise out of nowhere. Last night the same thing happened. I'm sure a lot of it is down to my body adjusting but it's just so frustrating.
So I guess my question is has anyone else made this change and how did you get on?

 

[tim2000s]

I did this a couple of years ago @linda_b. You may find this topic useful: http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/thr...pefully-providing-some-lessons-learned.70039/

 

[noblehead]

So I guess my question is has anyone else made this change and how did you get on?

Some experience, I switched from lantus to levemir then switched back again after a short period of time (as I couldn't get the dosage & timing right using levemir).

At the time of changing my DSN warned me that when people switch from lantus to levemir they generally see an increase in units injected, somewhere along the lines of a third more so you may find that your 8u split may increase over the coming days/weeks @linda_b

If the change to levemir doesn't work out then push to be changed onto Tresiba, there's a few forum members who use this basal including @robert72 , the feedback certainly seems to be positive thus far.


Good luck and hope the change all works out well.

 

[SimonCrox]

There is a Julio Rosenstock paper comparing lantus to levemir in T2DM; results were very similar and the main difference was that one needed 50% more levemir to match the lantus dose ie if switching from lantus to levemir, may well need more units of levemir than lantus.
Lantus was always sold as a uniform 24 hour insulin, but in the Fritsche study (again T2DM ) it worked better in morning than evening, which suggests not uniform effect over 24 hours - so about 5% of Italains split lantus
The blood glucose shooting up from 8.00 pm to 10.00 pm could be due to the lantus running out of steam;
Hope it all goes OK
Best wishes