Addie 5/20

[Shellie Veeeeeee]

Hi!
New to posting, I’ve been cruising the boards since Addie got diagnosed in August. She’s a 13 year old Tortie girl who’s developed diabetes out of no where. No known cause, always been a small healthy girl, ultrasound, and imagining on her pancreas and kidneys came back clean.

She’s been on Lantus til about 1.5 ago we switched her to Toujeo (which is still Lantus in long form). Anyone else seeing success with Toujeo. She gets 1 unit every 12 hours. Her high is at about 200 and low is 70-80. She’s free fed on Hills M/D because she won’t eat wet food and she’s a graizer.

Addie has had such great curves on it vs straight Lantus so I’m wondering if anyone has tried it. My IM doctor said a lot of pet parents don’t want to try it but he’s always had good results.

 

[Wendy&Neko]

We have had very few people on Toujeo and one of those was by accident. Toujeo is a U-300 insulin, whereas the other Lantus/glargine insulins are U-100. There are no U-300 syringes, so you have to dose by pen. And a single unit of Toujeo is 3 times the strength of a unit of Lantus, so it doesn't work for cats that need less than 3 units of U-100 glargine insulin, which is a lot of them. Having said that, I have seen one cat that needed very high doses of insulin because of a secondary endocrine condition, do well on Toujeo. I guess you are sort of lucky that she won't eat anything other than dry food, so she needs a higher dose of insulin.

The dosing methods we use here do dose changes by 0.25 units at a time (on a U-100 syringe), there is no way to do that with Toujeo since the pen goes up by 1 unit at a time. So basically, people using Toujeo for their cats can't use our dosing methods.

I have heard that it lasts a little bit longer in cats, giving somewhat flatter cycles than Lantus. Do you record her blood sugar data at all? Folks here use spreadsheets to track, details in here:
New? How You Can Help Us Help You!

 

[Shellie Veeeeeee]

We have had very few people on Toujeo and one of those was by accident. Toujeo is a U-300 insulin, whereas the other Lantus/glargine insulins are U-100. There are no U-300 syringes, so you have to dose by pen. And a single unit of Toujeo is 3 times the strength of a unit of Lantus, so it doesn't work for cats that need less than 3 units of U-100 glargine insulin, which is a lot of them. Having said that, I have seen one cat that needed very high doses of insulin because of a secondary endocrine condition, do well on Toujeo. I guess you are sort of lucky that she won't eat anything other than dry food, so she needs a higher dose of insulin.

The dosing methods we use here do dose changes by 0.25 units at a time (on a U-100 syringe), there is no way to do that with Toujeo since the pen goes up by 1 unit at a time. So basically, people using Toujeo for their cats can't use our dosing methods.

I have heard that it lasts a little bit longer in cats, giving somewhat flatter cycles than Lantus. Do you record her blood sugar data at all? Folks here use spreadsheets to track, details in here:
New? How You Can Help Us Help You!

hey! Thanks for response! She was on 1 unit of Lantus before and we were able to flip her to 1 of Toujeo pretty easily. I do track, but she’s been on LibreLink since November so it’s all in the app.
Yeah I’d say the downside to it is the lowest dose is the 1 unit but her curves are pretty darn flat on it compared to lantus (which was giving her peaks up to 350).
My vet explained that Toujeo isn’t truly 3x stronger. If that was the case she would’ve been on 3 units of Lantus and 1 unit of Toujeo. She was 1, maybe 1.5 every once in a while if she was extra Snacky. I was just curious if anyone else is using it currently!

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

There hasn't been much research on Toujeo in cats. I see a fair number of human diabetics and I don't see it used much with people, either. In my opinion, there is a greater risk factor with such a concentrated insulin. In addition, there's only one study comparing Toujeo with Lantus and the study was conducted using healthy cats. There are no studies that involve a diabetic cat sample.

 

[Shellie Veeeeeee]

There hasn't been much research on Toujeo in cats. I see a fair number of human diabetics and I don't see it used much with people, either. In my opinion, there is a greater risk factor with such a concentrated insulin. In addition, there's only one study comparing Toujeo with Lantus and the study was conducted using healthy cats. There are no studies that involve a diabetic cat sample.

yeah and that’s completely fair, and I was told that by my veterinarian. He had used it with great success with cats and dogs in the past and he specializes in Diabetes so I figured maybe Addie could help lend a hand with more information on Toujeo in cats. I’ve personally notice that her energy level is much greater and she seems to have less of the diabetic symptoms when on Toujeo.

 

[Wendy&Neko]

Maybe encourage that vet to do a formal study and publish the results. Would love to see more on it.