Insulin Degludec; a New Long-Acting Insulin

Insulin Degludec; a New Long-Acting Insulin

Diabetes mellitus is an ever common and increasing in prevalence, disease process afflicting many. Proper treatment, management and ultimately control of diabetes, is a complex and difficult task. Many factors contribute to the complexity of diabetes treatment. These factors play a role in the large occurrence of non-compliance in diabetic treatment therapies. Identifying, understanding and finally, addressing these issues will help alleviate these obstacles in diabetes management.

Factors Contributing to Insulin Therapy Non-adherence

According to Stockley (2014), consistently following an insulin therapy schedule will better control blood glucose levels and will decrease and help prevent future incidences of diabetic health issues. There are many reasons however, that these therapies are not routinely followed. These reasons for non-adherence to insulin therapy regimens include; fear of hypoglycemia, and more specifically nocturnal hypoglycemia, from both the patients and the physicians treating them, difficulty of injection device, and pain of injection and the complexity of the insulin dosages (Stockley, 2014).

Long-Acting Insulin

The use of long-acting insulin is a common and conventional treatment therapy for both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, long-acting insulins are utilized with meals as a subcutaneous injection. Long-acting insulin can also be combined with oral anti-diabetic hypoglycemic medications as is done with type 2 diabetes.

The two current and commonly long-acting insulins are; insulin glargine and insulin determir. These types of insulin are referred to as long-acting insulin and called such because of the slow, prolonged abs...

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...n other long-acting insulins are patients that experience insulin variability (Stockley, 2014, p. 19). This variability results in some individuals from the dramatic peak of the therapeutic effect of current long-acting insulins. The final group of diabetic patients that would benefit from insulin degludec would be those individuals having a hard time following the current stringent insulin dosing schedules (Stockley, 2014, p. 19).

Conclusion

The ultimate goal of diabetic management is the control and stabilization of blood glucose levels. This continual stabilization of glucose reduces the patient’s risk of developing diabetic related health issues and problems in the future. By reducing or even eliminating obstacles that prevent patients from following prescribed insulin treatment therapies can increase patient compliance and improve patients health overall.