My wife has type�1 diabetes, and my son was born with a hypoglycaemic condition. I recently came across information that horrified me. From what I understand Humalog Insulin is not recommended during pregnancy, especially during the first 12 weeks. It is very unfortunate that my wife was not privy to this information, as I understand that neither her diabetologist, nor her gynaecologist were. (My mother-in-law supplied the insulin to my wife, as it was covered in South America by her medical insurance, thus nobody here in Geneva prescribed this type of insulin for her.)

Is it general knowledge that Humalog may be implicated birth illnesses?

I just did a Medline search, and there is not a whole lot published about Humalog use in pregnancy. However, a recent report in QJM, May 2001, looking at 635 pregnancies over a 7 year period did not show any higher incidence of adverse outcomes. I am not aware of any reports that Humalog use by a pregnant woman truly causes any adverse outcomes in the newborn.

OWJ
Additional comments from Dr. Stuart Brink:
Most diabetologists around the world use Humalog during pregnancy. There are several excellent studies (some done by Dr. Lois Jovanovic) that documents how well Humalog performs during pregnancy. So, I do not believe that the problems you are experiencing with your child are related to your wife’s using Humalog. There are increases in congenital abnormalities of all kinds in women with diabetes but we believe these are caused by hyperglycemia and not the insulin since they also occur in women who do not use insulin during pregnancy. Controlling blood glucose levels in an improved fashion significantly reduces the incidence of congenital abnormalities in offspring.

There is a lot of nonsense implicating insulin analogs and even synthetic human insulin with many problems. Most of these associations are just not true — even though they persist, especially on the Internet.

SB

[Editor’s comment: A few years ago, there was a letter to the Editor of The New England Journal of Medicine on this issue. See the previous question which discusses it.

WWQ]