Is Frozen Insulin Still Safe To Use? | DiabetesMine - parkerflized1970

For many old age at DiabetesMine, we featured a regular time period column celebrated as Ask D'Mine. IT was a place where the community could ask questions, and get answers from Wil Dubois, a veteran type 1 and diabetes writer World Health Organization worked for finished a decade A a diabetes educator at a geographic region clinic in New Mexico.

Questions we often received centered around insulin temperatures, peculiarly how cold insulin stool get and if it's standing Okey to use if a vial or pen has been frozen? Whether IT be the result of frigid wintertime temperatures outside, mogul outages that lead to nary heat, emergency situations, or storage that might lead to a person with diabetes (PWD) putt their insulin on frosting for too long… it's a common question from the Diabetes Community.

This picky question came in to Ask D'Mine, from Mary in North Dakota who lives with type 1 diabetes: "Lots has been scripted more or less insulin and heat, but what about insulin and cold? How unloving can insulin draw and still be "OK?" I know we store information technology in the fridge, but can it freeze? Considerably, of course IT give the axe, only is it more ilk water, or more care anti-freeze? How shivery does it need to get before it freezes solid? If it did get frozen, can you thaw it retreat and still use it?"

With that topic in mind, Wil experimented with his home freezer one and only time to see firsthand how cold insulin could get before IT proves unusable. He also researched the issue, consulting insulin manufacturers and merchandise labeling, to offer the advisable counsel possible. Read on: you power just receive chills hearing what atomic number 2 determined!

For the sake of science, I put the last dredges of a vial of Novolog into my kitchen freezer last dark. Now, there wasn't that much left, maybe but 20 units close to, but this sunup I was rewarded with Novo-chicken feed in my Novolog ampoule.

How cold is my freezer? I have no thought. It's a garden-variety show Kenmore. It wish make ice-skating rink cubes and turn HÃ¤agen-Dazs into a solid rock, while leaving my pecans soft sufficient to eat in good order out of the deep-freeze. So it's pretty untold sensible like every other deep-freeze in the country.

My Logos Rio chilled a shabu of wine in the deep-freeze for me this summer, but I got home recent and the wine was about half frozen. On the other hand, we chilled some whisky shots nightlong with no whiskey-ice in the least. So from all this comparative skill, we cansafely infer that the freeze point of insulin is often closer to that of water than IT is to vino (typically 13.5% alcoholic beverage) or to whiskey (typically 40% alcohol).

Hence the result to your question is: Insulin is more the likes of water than anti-freeze.

So, if you unexpended your insulin in your car overnight in many areas of the country right now, you'd possess a immobilize of insu-chalk by dawn. Naturally, a full vial power non have fared too as my science experimentation did. The meth vial could have cracked Eastern Samoa the freeze insulin expanded, Oregon the pressure might have blown the crowning membrane inactive and sent quasi-frozen insulin everywhere, making your HÃ¤agen-Dazs perceptiveness like Band-Aids (a Ben and Kraut's flavor that never worked out).

One thing I did notice was that the insulin thawed much more than quickly than I would have expected when I was holding the chilled vial in my paw to try to get a picture of information technology. That power just be my warm hands and cold heart. Or the small size of the insu-ice cube.

But is the insulin still usable later it thaws? Is it look-alike Shackleton's 100-year-old whisky from the South Punt dispatch – rooted, just preserved for altogether time? Ready to use when returned to balmier climates?

Insulin getting frozen happens a great deal more often than you'd think. Tick prohibited the discussions active it here. Operating theatre here. Operating theatre Here.

Much of the conversation online revolves around how to get replenishment insulin from your pharmacy or health insurance plan; or direct quotes from the prescribing information sheets about the dangers of frozen insulin. And what do they say?

The prescribing info for Novolog specifically states, "Do not freeze NovoLog® and do not use NovoLog® if it has been frozen." And it says information technology all bold-y like that, so we know they mean business. The same kind of wording can be found connected Apidra, Humalog, Lantus, and Levemir insulins. So the folk who make the insulin think freeze it is a bad idea. But does that genuinely tell us that freezing is a problem, or just one they choose not to study? If freeze really did preserve insulin, then expiration dates might be impermissible the windowpane. We could stock. Net profit might plummet.

So what are the real facts? Has it been studied? Is there any word on nondisposable insulin from outside the manufacturers? The BD Diabetes site says that "once insulin is frozen, it loses its potential." And the Badger State Department of Health agrees.

Simply wait a sec. Endogenous imperfect insulin can represent frozen. As a matter of fact, blood samples for insulin level tests are supposed to represent frozen. And flavor here: a study at the Collaborative Studies Clinical Lab at Fairview-University med center showed that human insulin in blood "is lasting up to five freeze-melting cycles."

And you might find this case report interesting. Information technology's most a 28-year-old guy who thawed his frozen insulin in a 600-watt microwave (on defrost mode). Information technology ended… umm… badly… for him. Simply that said, his actions aren't really American Samoa gormless as they look after at first off glance. Frozen plasma can be stored frozen in hospitals and thawed in microwaves in emergencies.

Was IT the freezing or the microwaving that trashed his insulin? This is an senior case, but a follow-up study at the time looked at freezing and microwaving vs. freezing and room-temporary worker melt. Of worry, his "R" typewrite insulin survived either process just o.k., piece his "N" type fared more more than indisposed. Freezing apparently changed the "N," in a sense that caused information technology to be clumpy, so that when tired raised, the suspension wasn't consistent.

Would that mean a modern basal would be more sensitive to freezing than a current rapid-acting? I think that's too far a stretch, but based on this study, I'd predestined has hell hold away any mix-type insulin that got frozen. The juice in the modern mix is different, but the suspension fluid used is still zinc protamine, the similar clumpy culprit behind the 28-year-old's misadventures in ice-land.

What astir the modern essential and impervious insulins? Well, current basals work a lot differently than "N," and for that matter, Lantus and Levemir couldn't be more different from all other in how they work. Lantus is probably somewhat nigher to "N," but much higher-tech; while Levemir is nearer to the "R." But either means, I recall I personally would only employ a modern basal that was frozen in an emergency.

But, hey, if my fast-acting got frozen I think I'd try it out. Conservatively. With lots of fingersticks.

And a cold, stiff swallow.

"This is non a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly unselfish the Wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are non MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in Pyrus communis trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You smooth need the professional advice, treatment, and upkeep of a licensed checkup paid."

Wil Dubois lives with eccentric 1 diabetes and is the author of v books connected the illness, including "Taming The Tiger" and "Beyond Fingersticks." He spent more years helping treat patients at a farming medical nub in NM. An aviation fancier, Wil besides works as a private flight instructor. He lives in Las Vegas, Land of Enchantment, with his wife and son.