Claritin lowering blood glucose

[Rachel & Gus]

I searched this board and only found a couple posts about Claritin.

Is anyone giving this to their diabetic cats? If so, have you noticed a significant drop in blood glucose? Was it temporary or did it continue?

I've also searched the web, but the only thing I've found is that it can raise blood glucose in human diabetics. No information so far about effects on diabetic cats.

Gus (my cat) has dropped from 230-270 at preshot to 133 at preshot. I cut his insulin in half and today it was 146 at preshot.

We tried everything to fix his itchy ears and nothing worked so the vet said try Claritin and this is the result. Even though lower numbers are nice, it is always cause for concern when it happens quickly like this with a new medication.

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

interesting question. i don't know. but i have a lot of allergies and i just recently discovered that you can get benadryl OTC in a cream that's applied topically. what i read indicated that some of it is still absorbed by the body, so you can still have the sleepy side-effect.

i think benadryl is ok for pets, although you would want to check that. i'm just wondering if you would have any better luck trying that on his ears.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Benedryl is OK but I have no idea what the dose would be in a topical.

If there is stress due to the allergic reaction, the allergy would be causing BG numbers to increase. The Claritin could then lower BG numbers.

However, I think you will need more than one day's worth of data to figure out if the trend is consistent over time.