Toujeo - Conflicting Info On When To Toss The Pen

Hey everyone!

I started insulin on July 22 last month. 10 units of Toujeo every evening and so far it's worked out really well for me.

I'm a little confused with the instructions that come with the insulin pen. I'm Dutch, living in the Netherlands, and my leaflet tells me to toss the pen after 4 weeks once used. I'm hitting the 4 weeks mark today, but when I browse the US Toujeo website, it says the pen lasts up to 42 days, so 6 weeks.

I still have quite a few units left in the pen, around 125, and I hate wasting things. I don't know if the insulin is different per country. Should I play it safe and toss the pen after using it tonight, or can I extend using it to the 6 weeks the US Toujeo website claims?

My doctor whom I follow the treatment with is on vacation for another 1.5 weeks or so, and I'm uncomfortable asking anyone else at the practice for now.

This is the info from the Dutch leaflet (you can see "maximaal 4 weken" which means 4 weeks maximum ):



And here's the info from the US website:



That's the exact same pen I have so I'm all sorts of confused about this difference. If anyone has any enlightening information on this, I'd be grateful for your input!

TorqPenderloin said:

The official answer is that you should follow the manufacturer's recommendations.

HOWEVER, the practical answer is that the vast majority (myself included) of us would probably use it for at least 6 weeks (if not longer). Remember, these are manufacturer recommendations which means that they're designed to consider and account for very unusual situations. Realistically, the insulin probably will last much longer than the 4-6 week time recommended timeframe, but I wouldn't chance it.

Long story short, I can appreciate you not wanting to be wasteful, but if you're worried about it it's best to change out pens. If it were me, I'd probably use it a little longer, but that doesn't mean I'm right.

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Thank you! I think I'm worried because i don't know what happens when you use insulin that is no longer 'good'. What should I look out for, and when is it really time to toss them based on the fact they're no good anymore?

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Engineer88 said:

Do you pay for your insulin and do you test your blood sugars?

the reason i ask is that you might be able to get more out of it but I would suggest if you get unstable numbers toss it out immeadiately.

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Yes and no? I know insulin is insured, but I also pay for my medication up until I've paid around like €360. Only after I paid for medicine up to that amount does insurance take over and cover 100%.

I'll be honest and say I've no idea if insulin is part of that rule or if it falls in a different category. I'm not in charge of my finances (long story, but it's for stress reasons and heavy impact from stress) so I'll have to check with my finance manager and see how it works.

Edit: And yes I test my sugars.

Natalie1974 said:

It may be that it's made under licence in the Netherlands and perhaps using different preservatives or something...I'm only guessing here but that might account for the difference. As @Engineer88 says...perhaps continue to use it but ditch it if your BG becomes unstable.

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Thank you, I think I'll try 6 weeks and see what happens. Makes sense that different preservatives could cause that difference, hadn't thought of that!

Sent from my VS985 4G using DCUK Forum mobile app

1abRat said:

Older insulin should become less effective once it's "past it" and you'll see a steady rise in blood glucose. The hotter the country you live in the faster your insulin should age so perhaps that's been taken into account.

Definitely ditch the pen if you start getting unexplained highs but if I was you I'd probably use it up to 6 wks too and see what happened.

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Thanks! The Netherlands isn't particularly hot. We have maybe 2-4 weeks a year where we hit 30C or higher, but otherwise we have mostly a lot of rain, wind and cloudy days. The US has much more extreme weather than us!

I'm definitely going to keep using it and see how my sugars respond.