Feline Specific glucometer vs Human

zerovector

zerovector

Member Since 2022
What's the conversion between these two? I'm going to use a Glucocard Shine (I have months and months of strips) to start checking his curve, however the vet will want to see him after a week or two and do her own curve - is there a conversion factor so the vet and I can be on the same page?

Thank you.
 
I removed the "GA" from your subject line. It indicates a cat has died (i.e., "Gone Ahead" or "Guardian Angel")

There is no conversion between a pet and human glucometer. No doubt there is some complicated mathematical formula. I've been here over a decade and no one has volunteered to try to find the calculation! The best we know is that a 68 on a pet meter is equivalent to a 50 on a human meter. Beyond that, as numbers go higher, the difference between the meters get larger.
 
Sienne and Gabby (GA) said:
I removed the "GA" from your subject line. It indicates a cat has died (i.e., "Gone Ahead" or "Guardian Angel")

There is no conversion between a pet and human glucometer. No doubt there is some complicated mathematical formula. I've been here over a decade and no one has volunteered to try to find the calculation! The best we know is that a 68 on a pet meter is equivalent to a 50 on a human meter. Beyond that, as numbers go higher, the difference between the meters get larger.
Click to expand...

Ah, sorry - I thought it stood for General Advice! :banghead:

That's very interesting. Because I imagine that the hardware (sensors et al) are probably similar since they are all using the same glucose oxidase reaction, so the conversion or, whatever makes the difference between the feline and human ones has to be in the firmware.

I'll probably investigate this a little more, thank you all.
 
You are doing great to start preparing to test even before insulin comes, hope the procedure gets easier very quickly for you two :bighug:

I guess what @Sienne and Gabby (GA) is saying is that nobody here has found it to be of need, majority of people on the forum use human glucometer (cheaper stripes and all dosing methods have been developed based on human glucometers).
Just FYI if you will be testing at home there is no need to take the cat for a curve in the vets office, the glucose levels there will tend to be higher due to stress :) most of us on the forum do not consult dosing with our vets, in our case it became clear very quickly that he had no clue in dosing methods so thank God we found this forum :D

I noticed you intend to use TR dosing method, i believe it is a very good choice since it will give you the highest chance of remission nonetheless due to the fact that it is more aggressive the kitty should be on an exclusively wet low carb diet in order to be able to follow it safely. Have you tried to switch Black to wet low carb diet? There are techniques to help you with it. We were lucky enough that Chico was more than happy to switch to a fully wet diet but my sister successfully switched her “only kibble” kitty to wet food with the help of this article:
https://www.ibdkitties.net/switching-foods/

good luck and plenty of patience, FD requires a lot of patience :bighug:
 
Marina & Chico said:
You are doing great to start preparing to test even before insulin comes, hope the procedure gets easier very quickly for you two :bighug:

I guess what @Sienne and Gabby (GA) is saying is that nobody here has found it to be of need, majority of people on the forum use human glucometer (cheaper stripes and all dosing methods have been developed based on human glucometers).
Just FYI if you will be testing at home there is no need to take the cat for a curve in the vets office, the glucose levels there will tend to be higher due to stress :) most of us on the forum do not consult dosing with our vets, in our case it became clear very quickly that he had no clue in dosing methods so thank God we found this forum :D

I noticed you intend to use TR dosing method, i believe it is a very good choice since it will give you the highest chance of remission nonetheless due to the fact that it is more aggressive the kitty should be on an exclusively wet low carb diet in order to be able to follow it safely. Have you tried to switch Black to wet low carb diet? There are techniques to help you with it. We were lucky enough that Chico was more than happy to switch to a fully wet diet but my sister successfully switched her “only kibble” kitty to wet food with the help of this article:
https://www.ibdkitties.net/switching-foods/

good luck and plenty of patience, FD requires a lot of patience :bighug:
Click to expand...

Thank you - yes, he actually switched himself to a wet food diet around September - he hasn't eaten any dry food since then. He also wasn't diabetic at that point, from what I can gather he developed it within the last few months. He eats boiled chicken and Royal Canin Renal Support D (wet), which I know is higher carb that people like here, but so far I have had limited success with Weruva low carb options. Also, the insulin showed up tonight so I gave him his first shot after dinner (9PM) and after checking his BG (453!!). My mom will administer his next dose tomorrow at 9 AM (she's actually a nurse, much better with needles than I am) and I will begin aggressively monitoring his curves on Monday.

He didn't mind the BG test tonight so I will be prodding his ear quite a bit this week.
 
In addition to the no conversion, we've had many people do dual tests between human meters and the pet meters and still find no correlation you could generalize. Our dosing methods are based on human meters, so people can help you more easily if you are using the human meter. If the vet wants curve numbers on a pet meter, then do the curve with dual meters for that one day and send the vet the results. Actually, most people here stop listening to the vet for dose advice too if following the protocol. I found it was just too hard to get in touch with my vet in a timely matter when I needed a quick answer about what to do about dose. There was always someone here on 24x7.

Hopefully mom will be willing to learn to test Black's BG too. It'll be great to have more than one person on his care team.
 
Sorry to crash this thread, but are the numbers my vet gets when she does lab workup human or pet? A link to Maus's lab work is in my signature as an example of what I'm talking about
 
My vet found her OneTouch human meter numbers were quite close to the lab values. All vets used human meters before the AT came out and was heavily marketed. My vet and I traded tips on cheapest place to find test strips.
 
It depends on whether the vet is using a meter or going by labs that are sent out. The outside labs typically used a serum chemistry analyzer.
 
Sienne and Gabby (GA) said:
It depends on whether the vet is using a meter or going by labs that are sent out. The outside labs typically used a serum chemistry analyzer.
Click to expand...
It always says: Chemistry results from IDEXX VetLab In-clinic & tests for a bunch of things, although this time not as much as when we had general blood workup done in Dec just to see if there was anything on the radar:
ALB
ALKP
ALT
BUN/UREA
CREA
GLU
TP
GLOB
ALB/GLOB
BUN/CREA
 
Also, don't make my mistake. I thought I could get away with using expired test strips. I tested my cat two nights in a row, and he had the exact same BG - I was suspicious so I jabbed myself and it was the same reading I got when I tested to make sure the meter even worked. The strips rely on a enzyme reaction, and that enzyme degrades overtime and your readings end up unusually high.

Looks like he's gonna get spared the ear jab while I wait for new strips.
 
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