What are the recommendations regarding the best insulin to manage diabetes? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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More expensive analog insulins are used by the majority of people with diabetes who use insulin, a study by Rita Kalyani, a diabetes expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown. Is this practice based in any professional society recommendations? Kalyani comments.

Kalyani: None of them preferentially recommend use of the newer analog insulins over the human insulins. So the question is why are they being prescribed so often? Some of them act much faster at mealtimes, some are much longer acting, so you have less hypoglycemia during the day and less injections during the day. So we see that the newer insulins allow greater flexibility to match the daily patterns of people with diabetes, whether its their meals or their activity, with less hypoglycemia.   :32

Kalyani notes that these conveniences do come at a price, but less hypoglycemia or low blood sugar may also avoid hospitalizations. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.