I may be all wrong about this, but I think there’s a problem with the advice being given here. Actually, I think there are two problems.
First, my reading of the two linked articles doesn’t suggest that “ketones will
begin to show up at readings of 2.4 and 2.55 on a blood ketone meter.” They say that
DKA doesn’t show up before 2.4 mmol/L (or 2.55 in the second article).
In the present study, a cut-off value of 2.4 mmol/l revealed 100% sensitivity and 87% specificity for the diagnosis of DKA in cats, which is similar to the cut-off value in human beings.… In cats with a β-HB concentration < 2.4 mmol/l, DKA is very unlikely. (Weingart, p. 298)
A a-hydroxybutyrate concentration of >2·55 mmol/L had a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 68% for diagnosing ketoacidaemia. (Zeugswetter and Rebuzzi, first page)
The second problem is that there seems to be no distinction made in this thread between mg/dL and mmol/L. The image of the ketone strip bottle above is mg/dL, which would suggest that a reading of "2.4" is barely above "trace," but these articles both clearly reference mmol/L. This chart from the
Wikipedia article on Ketonuria shows the correlation between urine test strips, mg/dL and mmol/L:
Confusing mmol/L readings for mg/dL readings could lead to tragic consequences. (And now the chart from the DCI website referenced above starts looking pretty spot-on.)
I’m in the US and I bought my ketone meter off Amazon. It reads mmol/L. It says so right on the screen. For kicks, I looked at the first 4 blood meters that came up in an Amazon search, and the results were as follows:
KetoMojo -mmol/L KetoSens – mmol/L
KetoBM – mmol/L KetoDoc – mmol/L
(But please don’t take this as gospel folks. If you have a blood ketone meter it's up to you to determine for yourself how it reports results.)
I’m tagging the forum administrator and some moderators with the hope that someone will take a closer look into this issue (which I believe stems from an erroneous statement at the bottom of this
sticky) to ensure that the advice being given on this critical issue is well founded in science and safe.
@Robert and Echo
@Marje and Gracie
@Sienne and Gabby (GA)
@Wendy&Neko
