Insulin saved many lives, starting a century ago. Glucose monitoring saved more. New medications, likewise. And diabetes research is accelerating. I will be writing weekly Diaries for this group on remarkable topics such as
- Feline diabetes
- Retraining the immune system to stop attacking normal cells
- Ozempic for Type 1 diabetes when the beta cells have not all been killed
- Implantable devices containing beta cells, protected from immune system attack
- Diabetic macular edema
- CAR T-cell therapy
- Weekly GEP44 injections
- Ozempic and Wegovy shortages
- New GLP-1RAs
Let me know if any of these would change your life, or if there are other topics I should add to the list, because astonishing things are happening. As a friend says often in Good News Roundups
I love living in the future
Let’s start with the kittehs.
Cornell Feline Health Center
Supporting Cat Health with Information and Health Studies.
The usual treatments are insulin and a low-carb diet.
Insulin injections are the preferred method of managing diabetes in cats.
As shown in the image at the top of this Diary.
Cats with diabetes most commonly suffer from the Type II form of the disease. It is estimated that between 0.2 % and 1 % of cats will be diagnosed with diabetes during their lifetime.
The most important risk factors identified for the development of diabetes in cats include obesity, increasing age, physical inactivity, male gender, and the use of glucocorticoids (steroids) to treat other illnesses such as feline asthma. In some countries, Burmese cats appear to have a higher risk of developing diabetes than other breeds, but this may not be true in the United States.
Though there is no cure for feline diabetes, the prognosis for a good quality of life is good with adequate management at home. With early, aggressive treatment of diabetes, many cats will enter a state of diabetic remission, meaning they are able to maintain normal blood sugar levels without insulin injections.
Feline Diabetes: Symptoms, Treatments, Prevention, and Diet Tips
Thomas Graves and WebMD team up to provide feline diabetes information and tips for treatment or prevention.
There are some oral medications, but they have more side effects and are mainly used when insulin can’t be used for some reason.
I would not look forward to toe bean sticks for glucose monitoring.
Usually the blood tests are done during the regular visits with your veterinarian, although people can do them if they’d like.
Q: Should I only feed them dry food or just wet food or both?
A: That’s the raging argument right now. It’s fairly controversial. If you think about what a cat’s natural diet would be, they’re carnivores. So the diet they would eat, if they were running around outside eating the animals that they prey upon, would be a very high-protein, very low-carbohydrate diet. So the argument is, that is what they have evolved to eat and that is healthier for them. So why do we have dry food for cats? Because it’s more convenient for people. Some people just don’t like dealing with canned food. And there are a gazillion cats that eat dry food and don’t get diabetes. We see 20-year-old cats that eat dry food.
Does anyone here have experience with a diabetic cat or other animal?
