March 8, 2001
Blood Tests and Insulin Injections, Insulin
Question from the Internet:
I may have injected a morning mixture of NPH and Humalog into a vein by mistake, and subsequently, my pre-dinner glucose level was 25.6 mmol/L [1.4 mg/dl]. Ouch! My wife believes that the NPH never got a chance to work because once it entered the bloodstream it was degraded rather than utilized. Could you please direct me to some useful information regarding synthetic insulin metabolism?
Answer:
It’s pretty hard to inject insulin into a vein by mistake. A little bleeding at a normal injection site is usually from a superficial capillary and does not indicate that you injected it into a vein.
Neither Humalog nor NPH are approved for intravenous injection. I have heard unofficially that once injected intravenously, Humalog has a similar time action compared to Regular (It is almost gone in 10 minutes). I am not aware of any studies done with IV injection of NPH.
TGL
