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Monday, November, 30, 2009
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Shedding Light on the Co-morbidities of DiabetesThe Complications of Having Rheumatoid Arthritis and Diabetes

“I probably should do that”

Dr. Bill Quick
Dr. Bill Quick
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Physician and Medical Director of DiabetesMonitor.com

Dr. Bill Quick and his wife Steph are the authors of one of the ...

Dr. Bill Quick

Monday, February 09, 2009
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The "off-label use" of medications is common. I'll define off-label use as a recommendation by a physician to their patient to use a prescription medication to treat a medical condition that hasn't been approved for that medication by the FDA or other Health Authority. As most folks know, regulators ...
  1. lantus drip?
    frankenduf
    Monday, February 09, 2009 at 05:14 PM

    why would lantus BID be 'off label'?- since lantus has no signifigant peak, taking it BID would be functionally equivalent to taking it once a day- the only context that this makes sense to me is to control temporal spikes, but then anyone who has temporal spikes on a lantus QD regimen probably just needs a short acting bolus to control the spike, rather than changing to a lantus BID 'bolus' to control the spike

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    re: lantus drip?
    Dr. Bill Quick
    Monday, February 09, 2009 at 05:34 PM

    The reason it's off-label is sanofi-aventis' decision not to run studies on Lantus that compare the efficaciousness of once-daily vs. twice-daily dosing and to put that information into the label.

     

    And if I asked to were to guess why not, perhaps it might be that they don't want to dilute their message that it's a once-daily drug?

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  2. Untitled Comment
    Jenny
    Monday, February 09, 2009 at 06:23 PM

    It would be even more ethical if the patient got a copy of the prescribing information with every prescription. Not the dumbed down version, but a translation into English (or their native language) of the actual prescribing information.


    That way if their doctor forgot that they have some condition or were taking some other medication that could be very dangerous to the patient, they'll have another way of finding out. They would also see the list of side effects and be more likely to recognize important ones, like muscle pain with statins, that doctors are prone to ignore.

     

     

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