On the first date, the question was simply "How much insulin is your regulated cat getting?" and members quickly proposed adding weight and diet questions.

The second survey was more specific, asking: for the amount, frequency (twice a day assumed), type of insulin, weight of cat, and composition of diet (low carbohydrate, dry, mixed were suggested as categories, but many people gave detailed responses).

Regulation was not formally defined, but is largely understood by members of the board to mean that the cat's blood glucose generally ranges between 100 and 300 mg/dl over the course of a day, and typically has a nadir in the low 100's.  It is likely that some respondents did not understand that, and two responses were eliminated when it became clear that the cat rarely dropped below 300 mg/dl.

Click here for (redacted) raw data.

Number of observations: 69 observations on 64 cats (there were duplicates for a small number of cats who were regulated separately on high- and low-carb diets).

Types of insulin: PZI (of various varieties, mostly animal-based) and Humulin Lente were the most popular types of insulin, with Humulin Ultralente coming in third.  Together, these three types covered 72% of the respondents. (N.B. Lente and Ultralente are no longer being produced.)

    Insulin Type        Frequency
    -----------------------------
    PZI                       19
    Lente                     18
    Ultralente                12
    N                          9
    Caninsulin                 4
    Lente/Ultralente comb.     3
    UK Lente                   2
    Lente Iletin               1

Summary of doses:  SID doses (5 cats) were divided by 2 for comparison purposes.  Of the cats who were getting insulin (5 zero-dose cats not analyzed here), the mean dose was 3.0 units BID, and the median was 2.5 units BID.  Values ranged from .125 units BID to 11 units BID.   16% of the cats needed 1 unit BID or less, and 36% were getting 2 units BID or less.

Relationship between dose and weight:  There was a positive relationship between dose and weight, although this disappeared after controlling for diet and insulin type.  Further examination indicated that the cats receiving a combination of Lente and Ultralente tended to be the heaviest, and also tended to have the highest overall doses.

Relationship between dose and insulin type:  Generally, there was no relationship between dose and insulin type, with the exception of the Lente + Ultralente cats.  The source of PZI (BR, BCP, UK, Humulin) was also not related to dose.

Relationship between dose and diet:  There was a very strong relationship between insulin dose and general dietary type (p<0.001, Kruskal-Wallis test).

• No dietary information (13 observations): mean=3.3, median = 3.0 (range=1.25 to 6)
  

• High-carb (11 observations): mean = 4.5, median = 4.0 (range = 1.5 to 11)
  

• Mixed (12 observations): mean = 3.3, median = 3.2 (range = 0.5 to 5.5)
  

• Low-carb (33 observations): mean = 1.9, median = 1.5 (range = 0 to 7.5)
  

• Low-carb without the honeymooners (28 observations): mean = 2.1, median = 1.875 (range = 0.125 to 7.5)

9 out of those 28 (32%) were receiving 1 unit BID or less.

The means of the high-carbohydrate, mixed, and unknown groups were not signficantly different from each other; however, the low sample size makes it difficult to detect differences.  Controlling for insulin type and weight, and including the zero-dose cats, the cats on a low-carbohydrate diet had a significantly lower mean daily dose than the other three diets (p<.05, Tukey's test; p for high-carbohydrate diet vs low-carbohydrate diet = .0002).  Even removing the zero-dose cats, the low-carbohydrate group had lower mean doses than the high-carbohydrate group (p=.0035).

Standard deviation of error term = 1.75 units.

If the information in this document was useful to you, please consider "paying forward" by making a donation to IMOM (www.imom.org), an all-volunteer non-profit organization which was founded to help people help their sick, injured, or abused animals.

An informal survey was taken on the Feline Diabetes Message Board (FDMB) on May 1, 2003 and May 3,2003 to assess the experience of the members with respect to very first treatment that their vet recommended when their cats were first diagnosed with diabetes.  This survey is in no way scientific or representative of all diabetic cats.  The specific questions were:

1.) Month and year the cat was diagnosed.
2.) Initial type of insulin or name of drug.
3.) Initial dose of insulin or drug.
4.) Once or twice a day?
5.) First diet recommended by vet.

Data were entered into Excel and analyzed with SAS (R) for Windows (Cary, NC).

Number of observations: 119 cats were represented for 121  observations (a couple of cats were diagnosed with diabetes twice).

Month and year of diagnosis:  The survey was, not surprisingly, very heavily weighted to the recently diagnosed, with about 26% of the cats being diagnosed before mid-2000, 24% between mid-2000 and the end of 2001, 30% during 2002, and 19% during 2003 (roughly).

Initial treatment:  The vast majority responding -- 86% -- said their vets started their cats with insulin.  This may be because vets prefer insulin, or it may be because insulin users are more likely to end up on the FDMB.  This trend did not change over time (p=0.78, chi-square test).

If the information in this document was useful to you, please consider "paying forward" by making a donation to IMOM (www.imom.org), an all-volunteer non-profit organization which was founded to help people help their sick, injured, or abused animals.