Happy 5th D-Blog Day
Gina Capone of DiabetesTalkFest started D-Blog day in November 2005 and this year, we can all celebrate the 5th anniversary.
While World Diabetes Day is coming up quickly, today is a great opportunity to celebrate the richness of the online diabetes community (the DOC). When I started blogging about 3 years ago, people were blogging about diabetes and online communities did exist. Since then, the diabetes presence online has soared!
Today, we're blessed by social communities like TuDiabetes, DiabetesDaily, JoyOfDiabetes, and others. According to the diabetes search engine, there are over 525 blogs that cover life with diabetes. And many of us are also online using Twitter.
Today Twitter was full of #dblogday tweets, but any hour of the day you can find a lot of us at the Twitter water-cooler talking about diabetes, swapping blood glucose readings (especially on Wednesdays). To my view, Twitter has become a way to quickly update folks, look for help, or share successes.
Thank you to all my many online friends. Those that I've met, and all of you that I hope to say hello to in person before too long. I appreciate your insight, helpfulness, common sense and cold water. I know that living with diabetes is far easier because of you all.
On Saturday I'm planning to take part in the Big Blue Test, organized by Manny Hernandez. I'll be exercising for 14 minutes at 2 PM EST, and reporting my after exercise blood glucose readings afterwards (on Twitter and TuDiabetes). It's an easy way to get involved in the fun of the DOC, won't you join us?
FDA warning – fatal errors with some glucose test strips
I received a public health notification this afternoon from the FDA. You may get high blood glucose test results if you're using test strips based on GDH-PQQ and you're taking medication that contains non-glucose sugars. Note: this is not a recall, it's a warning.
The partial list of medications includes:
- Extraneal (icodextrin) peritoneal dialysis solution
- Some Immunoglobulins: Octagam 5%, Gamimune N 5% (no longer distributed in US), WinRho SDF Liquid, Vaccinia Immune Globulin Intravenous(Human), and HepaGamB
- Orencia (abatacept)
- Adept adhesion reduction solution (4% icodextrin)
- BEXXAR radioimmunotherapy agent
- Any product containing, or metabolized into maltose, galactose or xylose. (Usually over the counter products)
The FDA has provided a list of test strips affected by this warning. These include: many Accu-chek products; Abbott FreeStyle strips, including those for the Cozmo and Omnipod insulin pumps; and TRUEtest strips.
If you're affected by this warning and you encounter a false high reading, you can report issues directly to the FDA.
If you're not affected by this warning, it's a good reminder to wash your hands before testing. It's way too easy to get a false high reading because of foodstuff on your fingertips.
You can subscribe to these kinds of warnings but very few of them are related to diabetes devices, just fill out the simple form on this FDA subscription page.
Update: I received several press releases on this issue from various manufacturers of blood glucose test strips. Assuming it's reasonably accurate, the most useful is this document (PDF) from Roche Diagnostics. Table 2 below (click to see it in a readable size) lists some of the drugs that can cause maltose interference, about how many people are using them, and how they're delivered. Most of these drugs are used in hospital settings. From this table it seems like Extraneal users is the group most likely to have people with diabetes, and I'm assuming hospitals have been notified.
Bayer has posted a press release to say that their products are not affected by this warning. I spoke with someone from Agamatrix (makers of WaveSense meters) and their strips are also not affected by this warning as they use glucose oxidase.
