Question for AlphaTRAK Meter users?

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Jill & Alex (GA)

Jill & Alex (GA)

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Have you compared the results from your AlphaTRAK meter to the results on a human meter? If so, we'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to tell us the name of the human meter used in the comparison and the blood glucose range (e.g. 100s, 200s, 300s).


I compared my old FreeStyle with the AlphaTRAK in the 50s using the same droplet of blood. The meters were within a few points of each other.


Anyone else?
 
when I went thru the terrible meter issue with Do Lou I was comparing my Alphatrak to the relion confirm at first and then we switched to the glucoard01 akray and both are always within a few points of the A trak
 
Lisa and Do Lou said:
when I went thru the terrible meter issue with Do Lou I was comparing my Alphatrak to the relion confirm at first and then we switched to the glucoard01 akray and both are always within a few points of the A trak
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good to know. thank you!
did you find this to hold true in all ranges or just a specific BG range?
 
Jill,

If you need someone to do a trial with AlphaTrak vs Relion Comfort, I still have my old AlphaTrak and Cini is a bump on a log when I take his readings. I could do a few weeks run if you like.
 
Jill,
There are at least 2 or 3 beans in PZI who saw significantly different readings with the AT vs. their meters (at the same time seeing really wonky numbers from their freestyle meters vs. every other meter they tried. I'll see if I can get them to post here. Not sure about the high and low variances though...

Carl

ETA - I ran side by side tests at the vet twice, their AT vs. my relion micro, same drop of blood. One time her's was higher by 30, the other time higher by 25. But Bob's BG was running in the 350ish range at that time. Also, Dr. Lisa posted a question a month or two back asking for data like this, in Health, but not sure if the responses included any info specific to the AT meter.
 
I have compared my OneTouch Ultra on several occasions with the meter my vet uses, and it's always been within a few points, at all ranges. I don't know what kind my vet uses, but I'm pretty sure it would be an animal glucometer.
 
I compared Alpha Trak readings to a Walgreens meter. The Alpha Trak was registering numbers nearly twice that of the Walgreens meter. So, I bought a Relion meter and compared the three (one test only). It was a few points away from the Walgreens meter. The last bottle of test strips I bought for the AT had the cat code as 4; it used to be 11. I changed my meter code to 4 but am wondering if this could be impacting the readings. Results are listed below:

AT 448 Wal: 210
494 259
111 51
127 62
167 81
146 82
82 43 Relion: 48
 
Jill, when I get a low number on the AlphaTrak, I often compare and post it in my condo. This past Sunday, March 18, Maggie had a 61 at the pm cycle +3 with my main meter, the AT. I tested on my Relion Micro, and it was a 44, a 17 point variance.

On Friday, March 16, I also had a low of 62 at the am +3 cycle on the AlphaTrak. I tested on the Relion Micro, and it showed a 45, a 17 point variance again! Hope this helps
 
I started with a Relion Micro and changed to an Alpha because its what my vet uses.

I get a pretty significant difference in readings between them, the Alpha always higher.

If Ruby is testing in lower numbers (100s or 200s), there is about a 30 point difference. The higher she tests, the higher the difference between meters. I've seen up to an 80 point difference.

The interesting thing is that the curves, when graphed on a line chart, follow the same line, path for the most part.
The blue line is the Alpha and the red is a Relion.


comparison by amaryllisroze, on Flickr

I actually have 2 Alphas and they test pretty much the same most of the time.
 
Hi folks :-D

I am a ProZync user but Carl said you guys were having a discussion over here on Alpha Trak meters. I can tell you what we have experienced.

Over a year ago I started out with an Alpha Trak meter and hated it (errors a lot, takes a huge blood sample, no wicking strips, strips hugely expensive).

I then moved to a Freestyle Lite meter which I loved. Until this January when I found out my cat probably wasn’t regulated (or at least part of last year wasn’t regulated) and many people were finding their Freestyles were giving reading way lower than other meters. I would occasionally check the two meters against each other when I first made the switch. I found the AT was around 30 points higher than the FS. Sometimes a little higher but not by much. I was satisfied by this so we used the FS every day. A test I did on same drop of blood last year:
237 Alpha Trak, 204 Freestyle (January 28, 2011 a year ago)

I think there was a change in the FS strips at some point last year. I buy ahead so I have no idea when this might have happened with the FS strips I used.

You can check out our SS and see where we were then and where we are now with the numbers. I have noted sometimes there on the spreadsheet in my notes of the different numbers on different meters, below you will see numbers I took from my handwritten notebook too.

Fast forward to this January 2012 when I realized there was a real problem. I did several samples on the same drop of blood here at home:
318 Alpha Trak, 288 Relion Micro, 199 FreeStyle
273 Alpha Trak, 311 Relion,
328 Alpha Trak, 295 Relion
103 Alpha Trak, 86 Relion, 77 Freestyle
45 Alpha Trak, 36 Relion (most recent number, 8 days ago)

I also took the AT, the FS Lite and the Relion Micro to my vet to test against his bench top blood testing machines. The Relion was closest within a couple points, the AT was second best, and the FS Lite wasn’t even worth talking about, so far off I threw it in the bin. My vet said he was fine with us using the Relion.

So now I use the Relion every day. We use the glucoard01 akray strips from American Diabetes Wholesale. I check with the AT periodically or if I get a weird number (like that 36 a week ago :shock: )

It seems they are all closer at lower numbers, but when things get into the 300s there can be a 100 point difference OR MORE !!! between the Freestyle Lite and the AT.

I was told there was a change in the FS strips sometime last year, and also that Freestyle uses a different enzyme than the other strips? I don’t know, but like I said earlier, the Freestyle is gone for us.

Hope some of this is helpful to someone out there :-D
 
good information here!

I only see one side-by-side test on Jazzy's spreadsheet. The first time she hit green on AT, I retested immediately on my old Freestyle Freedom (not the newer Freestyle Lite). 80 AT, 70 Freestyle. My Freestyle usually read a bit lower than my other meters - usually just a few points in green - so it's possible that there would have been even less difference with Aviva, Contour, Relion, etc. When I switched permanently from AT to Freestyle, she was mostly in high numbers and there was some difference, turning her preshots from pink to yellow. I didn't do any side-by-side tests so this conclusion is based on looking at her overall range at that time.

Lucy lucked out tonight. I found my AT and found that I still have 3 test strips, so she almost became a test subject tonight. :lol: Lucky for her, the strips are expired and don't work.
 
I used the AT for 10 months and switched to ReliOn Ultima. Never had more than 10 pt. difference with the two meters. Even the vet was surprised when he used his AT and the same blood was used on the ReliOn. ReliOn Ultima does not require a test solution. The AT requires a test solution to be used prior to starting new test strips. I always tested and recallibrated the meter with new strips.
 
My Alpha came with 2 bottles of the control solution, which I expect I'll never use before it expires.

It doesn't take any larger of a sample than the Relion did, but I do like the way you can see the blood "wick" up the Relion strips better.

One thing about the Alpha I prefer is that you put the strip in before you turn it on. So I put it in before I even sit down with Ruby so it eliminates that part of the juggle during testing.
 
I have compared my walmart relion-micro meter with the AT meter many, many times and there is about a 30pt difference. Usually, the AT comes in higher than the micro meter. However, i have had times when the AT came in lower than the micro meter. But average, the AT is 30pt difference. As it gets below the 100BG reading the numbers getting closer and usually within 10pts of each other. I know that i have a "line drawn" when i get below that number with micro meter i start comparing to the AT and don't go below 70 on it. You might want to think about that in advance in case you start getting lower. Learned too, that if you use the same drop of blood, make sure it is a smaller drop. The bigger drops seems to make the BG readings higher. At lease that is how it is with us.

GOOD luck!!
 
We used the Alpha Trak from the time we started home testing until the beginning of this year, so around 9 months. It was the meter our vet was using so it was much easier to share our BG values. Doing frequent testing though was getting expensive and we were learning about human meters here in LL, so we changed to the glucocard 01 and Arkray meter from American Diabetes Wholesale (kind of generic relion mini). We found this meter a little easier for us to use and so much cheaper. We did quite a bit of comparison in the switching phase and found the numbers were routinely around 30 points higher with the Alpha Trak, and often a larger difference in the high numbers. When we got a new vet in January, the new clinic uses human meters.
 
wow! thanks for all the responses! there's a lot of good info here!

i suspected this 30 point difference between the AlphaTRAK and a human meter in the low range was not as consistent as we have been led to believe. because of the differences in human meters themselves, i think it's difficult to come to a cut and dried conclusion. this in itself is good to know because we won't be as tempted to say with utmost certainty that a 59 is a 29 on a human. although, erring on the side of caution is always a good idea. safety is always our number one concern!

i'm especially interested in comparisons between human meters and the AlphaTRAK in the 40 - 100 BG range. knowing differences in the lower range would help us decide how to treat the low numbers we're seeing.

cathy, if you'd like to run a comparison between the relion confirm and the AT, any info would be appreciated. however, i hesitate to ask anyone to run comparisons because i know the AT strips are expensive!

if you all don't mind, i'd like to occasionally bump this thread up in case others see it and have data to contribute.

thank you everyone! your insight is greatly appreciated.
 
cathy, if you'd like to run a comparison between the relion confirm and the AT, any info would be appreciated. however, i hesitate to ask anyone to run comparisons because i know the AT strips are expensive!
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Hey Jill,

Not a problem. My Vet wanted to know out of curiosity as well so she might spot me a bottle of strips. I'll talk to her tomorrow and see what I can do.

I would bring Cini to the Vet and compare side by side there but he turns in to Tiger Cat cat(2)_steam when he's there and I think they would be more than happy to give me a bottle of strips and do it at home. LOL :lol: :lol:
 
Hi Jill,

Just a blast from the past here, it's been a long time since I have been on the board.

As you know, I always thought that the alphatrak tested higher than other meters. I now use a relion micro (couldn't afford to continue with the alphatrak). I haven't done any large scale comparisons lately, but I do know that my 2 civvies both run about 50ish on the relion micro and 80ish on the alphatrak, I have checked them numerous times over the past year. I now use 50 as my cutoff for dose reductions (using the relion) and if I ever went back to the alphatrak, I would use 80.

As for Shadow, he is great. Everything is the same. He still bounces like crazy, but he is down to a dose of 0.5f and we see green regularly. I keep my spreadsheet in my head these days, so there is nothing to look at, besides it would be huge by now with the number of years I have been at it.
 
Jill,

I have some numbers from Sid from a time he was at the vet and they did comparisons with my Relion micro and the AT. I found that with lower numbers, the difference between the AT and ReliOn is less but this number increases as the bg rises. I also found that my ReliON was really off with the high numbers and that is why lately I've been using a Bayer Contour.

1/6/12

8:45 am
36 RO
46 AT

9:50 am
40 RO
53 AT

10:55 am
52 RO
75 AT

12:10
134 RO
128 AT

1:10
344 RO
286 AT

3:25
509 RO
439 AT
 
I just ran home and did a mid-cycle test on Ruby. I just the same drop of blood for both.

My Alpha - 270
The Relion Micro - 207

This is pretty standard for what I've seen with my meters.
 
Good idea, Jill! You'll find some comparisons from our early days noted on Willie's spreadsheet. We eventually went with the Relion Confirm/Arkray Glucocard 01 due to cost and availability.

I think part of what throws a wrench in things is the 20% variance allowed by the FDA. I was using another meter for awhile. The something Redi-Code (okay, just googled... the Advocate Redi-Code). It ran signficantly higher than the Relion... much more in the AT range even though it was a human meter. I did find it helpful at times to test with both the Relion and the Redi-Code as the Relion consistently ran at the low end of the 20% and the Redi-Code at the high end... there was so little overlap between the two ranges that, if both were "correct," it greatly narrowed the range in which Willie's actual number could be found. That said, taken in isolation, it can mean that a test taken on three different meters, even in mid-blues, can yield widely varying results.

For example, while Donna's first example shows the FS out of range with the other two meters, the second test with all three, 103/86/77, is actually still within the 20% MOE. Even the first set, 318/288/199 isn't that far off... when looking at the overlap between the ranges, the actual number was probably in the human meter 230s, especially if you take into account the "AT runs 30 points higher" addage. At higher numbers, that 20% MOE is just really an accuracy killer!

Okay, so maybe no comparison test right now... forgot how pricey the AT strips are!! Though, I could in theory rent the meter from our old vet for a few days.
 
thank you, everyone! feel free to continue adding AlphaTRAK comparisons any time you'd like. the data is much appreciated!
christie, i think you're right. this 20% variance allowed by the FDA does seem to throw a wrench in things!


*waving "hi" to D*... so good to see you! happy to hear shadow is doing well. you're both missed!
 
Bumping this thread to see if anybody had any more info to contribute about this.

I'm trying to determine how accurate my ReliOn meter readings are compared to the vet's readings. In a thread on a board about dog diabetes, one poster said that for readings between a certain range, she divides the ReliOn number by .66, .75, or .85 (depending on the range). Other places, people say they just add 30 to the ReliOn reading.

I don't want to get too excited about the lower numbers on my ReliOn if they're painting an inaccurate picture of Lily's health :(
 
Also, I am a total newbie at this, so I apologize if you've already discussed this topic to death. I've done a lot of searching and reading on this site and others, but I still have questions.
 
Does your vet use an Alpha?

I have two Alphas and sometime they test just a couple of points different and some times its a larger difference. In comparison with my Relion Micro, the Alpha always tests higher, anywhere from about 30 points (when she's in the 100s and lower 200s) to about 70 points (when she's in the 200s and 300s and up). The standard here is that the Alpha is 30 points higher than a human meter.

I've had to make myself stop concentrating on the difference between meters because if I don't, I get freaked out by the difference meter to meter and end up convinced that there is no such thing as a truly accurate meter. You can even use the same meter twice in quick succession and sometimes get very different numbers.
 
Morning and yes, my Vet uses the AlphaTrak.

I saw that you bumped up the thread earlier, so this morning I tested on both my AlphaTrak and my back-up, which is the Relion Micro. I'll do this periodically, especially with a low number.

147 AlphaTrak

128 Relion Micro
 
:lol: amy, i thought you had your hands full just now!

thanks for posting whatever else you come up with - it really does help because some people seem to have similar numbers between the AT & human meters in the lower numbers. yours are obviously closer to the 30pt difference that we have generally been told exists between the AT & human meters.
 
Here's how its shaping up on the lower end tonight.

Alpha/72, Relion/44
Alpha/72, Relion/42
Alpha/85, Relion/49
Alpha/100, Relion/57
Alpha/126, Relion/76
Alpha/100, Relion/61
 
A few more from last night.
Alpha/85, Relion/53
Alpha/76 Relion/47
Alpha/94, Relion/48

So for us, when she's under 150, it can range anywhere from a 28 to a 50 point difference with the Alpha always higher.
 
Maggie had a green, so I used both meters for comparison:

94 AlphaTrak
77 Relion Micro


ETA: Thanks Amy. I bought my Relion Micro in January 2010 when Maggie was first diagnosed. Gee it's been a while since her diagnosis. Time flies.
 
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