January 19, 2006
Insulin, Other
Question from Sacramento, California, USA:
My son is 17 and was diagnosed with type 1 five years ago. Recently, we have seen a significant reduction in his Lantus dose. He is a tall, muscular kid who was using 88 units of Lantus daily up until a month ago. Then, he started having numerous lows and we have gradually reduced his dose to 62 units per day, plus NovoLog for meals. Our doctor felt this decrease might be attributable to the end of puberty and the accompanying human growth hormones, although she felt this was a rather inadequate explanation for such a substantial reduction. Do you have any theories?
Answer:
I actually like your doctor’s reason. The IGF (insulin growth factor) in boys really does drop a lot. We do see it even if we don’t have a good explanation. Sometimes it goes back up and we still don’t have an answer. It is among the strong arguments for careful monitoring, not the only one, but a good one.
LD
