testing urine for glucose??

I talked to the vet today. (I've decided to keep her as my primary b/c she is very communicative and open to new ideas. She has called me three times since my initial visit ... I put a call in to my old vet on Friday AM when Meatball had high ketones, and still have not heard anything from her!)

Anyway, they are doing a urine culture to see if Meatball may still has some infection .. this will take a couple of more days. But they also did a urinalysis, and she was surprised to find that he did not have any glucose in his urine, which she said is very uncommon for cats with diabetes. Because of this she thinks that Meatball may be getting too much insulin. She advised me to start testing is urine at home for glucose, and whenever there are two days in a row without glucose, to lower the dose of insulin.

I know I have almost nothing to go on, but based on his BG reading tonight, it seems like moving up in the dosage is helping.

I have not heard anyone on the board talk about this as a possible way to determine if more or less insulin is needed. Is this a common practice? Does anyone else do this? Does it work??

 

Hi Molly,

I never had much luck trying to test my cat's urine for glucose or to catch for a sample. My cats get ticked off when I mess around with them in the little box. Plus the information is not current. A friend of mine has semi- regulated his dog using pee strips, but it took him a year to get to that point. Dogs are easier to do that way than cats - in my opinion because they seem to be able to pee just at the sight of a fire hydrant! With cats you don't have that luxury and when you need a pretest number, you might not get it if the cat already peed or is holding out on you. If there isn't any glucose in the urine, why would your vet want you to give insulin? Have you tried blood testing at all?

I am just back on the board recently and don't know you or your cat's history. But the first night my cat was on insulin, 1/2 unit dropped her over 300 points in 4 hours. Without blood testing, well...you can see what may have happened. It's not fun, it sure isn't easy, it doesn't go over big with the cat being poked, BUT that cat will have a better quality of life as a result of blood testing..IMHO.

Ruthe and Rugs

 

Just because your cat isn't dumping glucose into the urine doesn't mean that insulin isn't needed, it just means you are doing a good job! Glucose is dumped into the urine by the kidneys if blood glucose levels go above renal threshold, which is somewhere around 270. So dosing by urine glucose doesn't help, because your cat could be just under renal treshold or way under...that is why bg testing is the way to go.

So in a nutshell, no, I would not drop the dose just because you do not see glucose in the urine.

Make any sense?

 

I agree with Jen.

A well-regulated diabetic cat (getting the correct for him/her dose of insulin) will NOT dump sugar into urine.

Sugar is dumped in the urine if the kitty spends a lot of time with Blood Sugar over 300.

Also, testing the blood is more accurate than testing the urine for sugar. If you are testing the blood -- no need to test the urine for sugar - only for ketones if blood test shows high blood sugar.

 

Ah...it is slowing come back to me! That is correct! No glucose in the urine is a good thing for a diabetic kitty!! Thanks for jogging my brain!

 

The problem I'm specifically having though is that Meatballs BG readings are in the 400-500 range pretty regularly before his insulin shots. So for BG to be high, and urine glucose to be low, seems sort of impossible.. and I don't understand what that means.

 

What are his inbetween tests like? Because all that happens is for him to go below renal threshold for the period of time inbetween urinations....