March 20, 2007
Hyperglycemia and DKA, Other Medications
Question from Boston, Massachusetts, USA:
My four-year-old son was diagnosed with type 1 four months ago. He also suffers from seasonal asthma and needs to use nebulizer solutions (not steroids) to treat it. Every time we do one of these treatments, his blood sugar rises a lot (over 300 mg/dl [16.7 mmol/L]) even with the basal insulin treatment he is getting (NPH and Humalog in the morning, Humalog at dinner and Lantus at night). We have tried different kinds of nebulizer solutions and his blood sugar is still high. We have not gotten the results of the first A1c test yet. How do we manage this? Should we give him more Humalog to prevent this rise before using the treatments?
Answer:
The most common treatment for asthma is a medicine called Albuterol. It typically doesn’t have a significant effect on blood sugars. It is common in the first months of diabetes to have erratic blood sugars. It is also common to have erratic blood sugars during the course of an illness such as asthma. I would recommend reviewing his asthma and diabetes treatment with your pediatrician and diabetes team to ensure he is on an appropriately calculated dose of insulin and asthma medication.
MSB
