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Please explain …thanks
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weird, my post didn’t post. ahhhhhhh! all that typing.
Basically what i was trying to find out is if the expiration dates on test strips really hold true. I’m recently uninsured and have a surplus of strips from when I was insured. I’d like to have them last me past the vial expiration dates and was wondering if anyone has successfully used strips past expiration. I was friends with a pharmaceutical rep about 3 years ago and he informed me that insulin expiration dates are very conservative and you can safely use insulin many months or even years past expiration, wonder if same holds true for strips.
it probably depends on how they have been stored and how far past the expiration date they are. personally, i have used test strips past their expiration date without issue. I test frequently so if something looks out of whack, i know right away. i would also buy some control solution and test each vial before use and make sure they are testing in range.
I hate control solution I have the toughest time finding it without going online
Really? I seem to see it everywhere i go my local pharm’s. must be my luck and the area i live in.
I think you’re good if you keep them in a cool, dry place. (Look up the Traveling Wilbury’s song by the same name!) Heat and humidity of the enemies of test strips. 30 years ago, the first test strips, Ames Gluco-Stix, were incredibly sensitive to humidity.
The gotcha will be, that some brands of strips have embedded in their coding an expiration date. And a meter set to a date, past the strips expiration date, will refuse to use them. Sometimes you can work around this by setting the meter “back in time” to a previous year.
And eventually the strips/meter will become not “old” but “no longer manufactured”, or the manufacturer might go out of business, and you might find yourself with a large cache of test strips, a broken meter, and no place to buy a new meter.