New Insulins and Quality of Life

Insulin therapy is the factor that most affects the diabetic patient’s quality of life because it is unavoid-able, strictly connected with the timing of meals and impacts also on the patient’s lifestyle. For this reason, insulin therapy may be likened to an artist’s palette where the insulins represent the colors and the final painting, quality of life. The concept of quality of life is very personal; it means different things to different people, even peo-ple of the same age. Consequently, insulin schemes should be highly personalized. This is particularly im-portant in the case of children; the diabetologist should try not to derange the child’s lifestyle and habits; ideally, the diabetic child should not feel dif-ferent from his/her friends. Fortunately, the advent of the new insulins has represented a tremendous step forward in this sense, because, given their different pharmacokinetic profiles, it has become much easier to customize therapy. We have evaluated the characteristics of insulin analogues and compared their advantages and disad-vantages with respect to the needs of patients. Short-acting insulin analogues The advantages of short-acting insulin analogues (Lys-Pro ™ and Aspart ™ insulin) are: 1) a more flexi-ble lifestyle, because patients can inject insulin imme-diately before or after a meal (1), and can better adapt the dose to carbohydrate intake; 2) improved 1- and 2-hour post-prandial blood glucose levels compare