Anyone have helpful information regarding effects of Paxlovid for Covid’s effect on BG? My sugar has been extremely high since I started the medicine yesterday. I wear a G6, Omnipod and Dexcom six.
I had Covid just over 1 1/2 years ago and from what I remember my BG went up about 30 points as soon as I got Covid and then started Paxlovid 3 days into Covid and BG was not affected by the Paxlovid, actually BG started coming down on day 4, I believe and ran about 10 points high for a week or so beyond that. I don’t remember how much additional insulin I was taking but was managing insulin based on my Dexcom G6 readings,
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I’ve taken a course of Paxlovid to treat Covid twice. I did not notice a pronounced BG effect from the medicine. Being sick , however, pretty much always increases my insulin needs.
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Covid shot my blood sugar up but I was able to get a handle on it by using a very aggressive insulin regime for a few days and then slowly tapering. I started using Paxlovid about the same time that I bumped up the basal rates so I can’t separate out its separate effects.
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Very interesting thank you for sharing this information. Just this afternoon I went in and changed my basil rate just a tiny bit as I have to keep doing additional bonuses to chase sugar and I don’t wanna do that. There’s a learning curve here.
I did not take Paxlovid but when I had COVID my blood sugar way way high for two weeks, I had to amp insulin by like 2X. It was still trending high for several weeks after I finally started getting better. A lot of variation you can ascribe to many things and not know for sure. My numbers were so unusally high and my insulin needs so unusually amped up that I can say with as much certainty as you can have that it was due to the illness itself. So, maybe that’s what’s happened in your case too, and the timing w/ Paxlovid is a coincidence (though of course I couldn’t say with any certainty either way).
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Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I cannot believe how high my blood sugars have been for the last 10 days and now I believe I have a second variant because I’m sick all over. I’m having to change my Omnipod early because I’m running out of insulin for all of the corrections. This is a major drag.
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Just try your best. Bolusing was really hard cuz even with long pre-boluses with more insulin, my blood sugar still shot up quickly to 300s. And that was trying to eat often with no appetite or flat-out nausea/parosmia. Awful awful. Then having to be super careful though with corrections before bed. I feel you.
You’ll get through. I am not a doctor, but the main thing is, monitor your oxygen with an oxygen meter, and measure temp, and if oxygen gets low or temp gets high, seek urgent care. Hang in there.
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Are there times you could do bolus by pen or syringe? Could get longer hours per podd.
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Thanks again.
The Phase 3 clinical trial for Paxlovid included 125 diabetics. Glucose is not mentioned in the drug fact sheet.
My experience was my blood glucose acted the same as any other day I split all my time between the bed and the couch. Without expending energy the amount of insulin required to change my blood glucose is less linear, more exponential as the size of the desired change grows.
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