Letter From The Editor

For many years insulin has been looked at as a treatment of last resort for patients with type 2 diabetes and so patients can be highly resistant to exogenous insulin when they start on injections and this resistance often grows as they continue to gain weight with the added insulin. …

This week, our special text is our Comprehensive List of Insulins. The most comprehensive and up-to-date list available, this 22-page printable pdf includes Rapid-Acting, Short-Acting, Intermediate-Acting, Long-Acting, and Pre-Mixed or Combination Insulins. Our Disaster Averted looks at how hemoglobin variants can make an A1c test inaccurate, and our Homerun Slides focus …

It is interesting to listen to PCP’s and other prescribers talk about their reluctance to use GLP-1 analogs in their practice. This class of drugs had a great presence at this year’s ADA Scientific Sessions and many of the posters and presentations were focused on the practical use of these …

When Steve and Andrew got back from the scientific sessions in San Francisco we put together an awesome overview of some of the new research and studies on GLP-1. Now that we have had some time to review the entire list of GLP-1 related presentations we are proud to provide …

I was working with my calculator earlier (my abacus is broken) and figured out that each of you who reads this week’s newsletter saves about $2300. Our publisher, Stephen Freed, spent all of his time finding the best and most interesting articles and people to talk to at the 74th …

There was a lot of activity at the ADA this year and considerable attention was focused on the SGLT2 inhibitors. This class of drugs, which includes the currently approved canagliflozin and dapagliflozin and the hopefully-soon-to-be-approved empagliflozin as well as about 20 others, has been getting a lot of attention because …

The last time the ADA was in San Francisco was 2008, and there were only a few of us who had even heard of a GLP-1. This novel hormone for the first time had a synthetic duplication that could be used to help control glucose levels. This time when the …

Sometimes life is too sweet to be true and in this week’s Disaster Averted, our patient finds out how sweet life can get if you grab the wrong bottle off the grocery shelf. Our Clinical Text looks at diabetes medications that can increase insulin production and how they figure in …

This week there is a lot of press on the use of insulin right after metformin and the increased risk of death in patients on this combination. Upon reading the entire article you see, however, that it is a retrospective review and unfortunately there is little if any data on …

On my way to the airport Monday morning I was listening to a feature on NPR’s Morning Edition about the use of pharmacists in the ER and of course my ears perked up. They were discussing how many drug errors occur in the hospital and how over 7,000 people die …