My insurance company is changing their formulary for long-acting brand from Lantus to Basaglar starting Jan 2018. So I will be switching from Lantus to Basaglar around that date.
It certainly sounds like a one-for-one swap but if anyone has had any experience changing brands specifically to Basaglar, please let me know the ups and/or downs!
Is it true that it is only 15% cheaper than Lantus? that’s what I found on a quick Google search.
I switched about 1 yr ago for the same reason. Not happy about using something new to the market. So far the only difference was the opposite effect at night. Took my Lantus at night. My morning BS where higher than going to bed but normal range. When I switched my BS went low during the early morning. So I was told to lower the dose. When u switch make sure u check readings more often. I’m fine now but still not happy about new meds.
I switched from Lantus to Basaglar last year, when the formulary changed. I didn’t notice any difference whatsoever.
As an update - I talked with the doc early this year and have actually switched to TRESIBA.
After nearly 40 years with vials and syringes, this is my very first time with pens!
Still tweaking the dose. I initially guessed maybe a 10% in my basal units (compared to Lantus) but am carefully tracking what I’m doing mid-day and overnight without food.
That’s kind of amazing. Any particular reason you stuck (ha ha ha) with syringes all this time? Cost maybe? I went back to using them for a while when I was on Lantus-Novolog, but only for the Lantus, because I didn’t need to carry the stuff around with me all day, whereas the convenience of pens for bolusing outweighed the extra cost. But then I remembered how much I hated all the bubble-tapping I used to have to do back in the R/N days and eventually went back to pens because screw it, if I have to jab myself multiple times a day, at least I can do it with the least amount of hassle.
I am a COMPLETE NEWBIE with the pen and hardly think I’ve grown accustomed to it!
I still regard the pen as MAJOR more hassle than the syringe. I didn’t have to unseal and screw on the needle and then remove two more covers every time with the syringe.
Syringe was completely natural, what you see is what you get. This deal with turning the clicky knob on the pen to a number and then trusting the pen to dispense the right number of units by that last click, I’m still not sure I intuitively trust that.
Estimate of number of plastic syringes I’ve gone through: 36 years. Most of those years 4 or 5 times a day (there were a few early years where I did R+N just twice a day). So 36 x 365 x 4 comes out to more than 50,000 plastic syringes. I’m actually a little surprised the number is so small!
(Of course I’ve nearly forgotten about glass syringes with removable/washable/resharpenable Luer-Lock needles Somewhere I still have the wooden box with U-40 glass syringe, probably no needle though? What was that brand name of the cleaning solution, “Yale”?).
I joined the club a bit late for that, though apparently I didn’t miss it by much–my last diaversary was 34 years to your 36. Still pre-glucometer by a few years and well before the advent of pens. But my syringe count would be quite a bit shy of yours. I did 20 years on R/N, just 2x/day like you (mixing 'em in the morning, because you could do that and save yourself an injection), then straight to injector pens when I finally (finally finally finally) got a referral to a real endocrinologist at Joslin, whose first words after looking over my records were “You’re not doing too badly considering your treatment regimen doesn’t make any goddamned sense.” I was so relieved to be off that R/N stuff that my associations with pens are very positive, while syringes… not so much. And I hated thwacking the bubbles out, though unfortunately that’s back to being a thing for me since going on a pump.
I feel the same about syringes… it’s all what you’re used to…
I would just keep a needle on for the whole day or more when I used pens, never had a problem.
New to the forum. I’m 42, male, have had type 1 for about 38 years. My last hemoglobin A1C was 6.1. I am in near perfect care of my diabetes. I too, was forced to switch from Lantus to Basaglar. There are differences, but there are also differences in my approach. Keep in mind, I’ve never had a diabetic doctor, nor an endocrinologist. But I do test frequently, and only change one variable at a time when making changes, and gather data for long periods of time before making statements on issues.
For starters, I didn’t take my Lantus at night; I took mine at 11:00-11:30am every day - literally 12 hours different from most people. Lantus “peaks” causing night sweats, and physiological highs in the morning. That’s where your body saves itself while you’re sleeping by over re-leasing stored sugar in your pancreas. Also Lantus tapers off slowly over 20 hours, leaving me completely without insulin from 7:00-11:00am. I would spend 4 hours every morning chasing my blood sugars, but I was fine with it, it’s not as hard as it sounds. It’s actually really easy if you know your carb ratio.
I used to take 24 units of Lantus daily. I now take 28 units of Basaglar daily (at 11:00am).
There are differences. If I planned on eating a light lunch, with Lantus, I wouldn’t need any Humalog, or very little - not the case with Basaglar. Basaglar truly has little-to-no peak. If I go to bed with 100mg/dl, I wake up with 100mg/dl. With Lantus, I had to have higher blood sugar at night (over 160 mg/dl) for me to wake up with 100mg/dl. My blood sugar dropped at night, EVEN THOUGH I TOOK LANTUS DURING THE DAY.
I am pleased to report that I also do not like switching meds, but Basaglar is WAY better than Lantus was. It does what a non-diabetic body is supposed to do. In my type 1 body, if I don’t eat, and I don’t take insulin, my blood sugar will gradually increase. I don’t know what Lantus was doing; it was up, down, all over the place. With Basaglar, it’s stable. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to being non-diabetic. Stable blood sugars for 20 hours. Another benefit of Basaglar is, I take the same amount of Humalog, no matter what time of day. The only cheat that I miss is now I have to take Humalog every time I eat and not less of it either. A small price to pay for consistently stable blood sugars.
Again, I used to take 24 units of Lantus; the equivalent for me is 28 units of Basaglar. Hope this helps.
Been on forum about two months. Started Basaglar in place of Lantus 2 1/2 weeks ago and have been stable.
Best wishes to all!
An Insurance Plan I might join covers Apidra & Basaglar but not my Lantus. After reading dozens of (year old) reviews of disappointment for Basaglar compared to Lantus, I turned to here. Most reviews indicated that they had to increase dosage by 150% (give or take). Sounds like most people here are satisfied with what they experience with Basaglar.
Basaglar doesn’t work at all. My average fasting sugar scores in the morning were between 80 and 100 for years with lantus. When Aetna forced me to kill myself by using Basaglar this year they are now over 300. I am reviewing my will
Maybe switch to a different basal then?