Source: Diabetes Care  |  Posted 9 years ago

Patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes treated with insulin lispro have immunogenic profiles similar to those of patients treated with recombinant human insulin.

Insulin lispro does not induce significant levels of specific or cross-reactive antibodies in patients who have previously received insulin, and there are no significant antibody-dependent increases in the required dosage of insulin for these patients.

Allergies to insulin are no more common among patients treated with insulin lispro than among patients treated with recombinant human insulin.

These results are from a multinational, multicentre combination of controlled and non-controlled, open-label studies conducted over a 4.5 year period. They are reported by investigators from the Department of Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine and Lilly Research Laboratories of the Eli Lilly Company, both in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States.

The study included 1221 men and women, aged 12 to 81 years, with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Radioimmunoassays were used to assess levels of circulating anti-insulin antibodies.

Results showed that the levels of insulin-specific and lispro-specific antibody responses were within background levels of the assays.

In patients who had previous exposure to long- and short-acting insulins, transfer to lispro did not increase antibody levels significantly above baseline.

New exposure to insulin lispro did increase cross-reactive, but not specific, antibody levels.

Antibody responses decreased over time and returned to baseline or near-baseline levels by the end of the study period. There was no evidence of anamnestic antibody response in any patients treated intermittently with insulin lispro.