Daisy Vee

[bgdavis]

Re: Daisy Vee

Mike,

Just popping in for a sec since I'm reovering today from my cataract surgery! I have a Freestyle meter and have bought my strips off of Ebay for years. You must be careful to read the expiration dates and look for sales of just the quanity you can use, but I sometimes get a 100 strips plus lancets for less than the stores charge for 50.

Bonnie and Crissy

[We Hope]

Re: Daisy Vee

ReliOn's Ultima is made by Abbott. If you look at the demo here where the meter's shown, you can see it looks a lot like Abbott's Precision Xtra minus any blood ketone testing capabilities.

http://www.relion.com/ultima_demo/index.html

http://www.abbottdiabetescare.com/co...ofile_0004.htm

What else is interesting is that both the AlphaTrak and Abbott's FreeStyle Freedom, introduced in 2006 but now supplanted by FreeStyle Freedom Lite, both use/used the same amount of blood for a sample--0.3 microlitres.

http://www.abbottanimalhealth.com/ad...nt_0000009.htm

Abbott, BTW, is talking up the difference in the way glucose is distibuted in blood by the various species:

------ % glucose concentration in Red Blood Cells----% in plasma
Human 42% 58%
Dogs 12.5% 87.5%
Cats 7% 93%

So we have a person whose glucose concentrations are just slightly unevenly divided between RBC's and plasma, and then we have dogs and cats for whom the majority of their glucose concentration is in plasma.

Since humans split their concentrations, it only makes sense that a meter system would need to have means to provide accurate readings on this basis.

http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Gl...lasma_Readings

"Glucose levels in plasma (a component of blood) are generally 10-15% higher (even more after eating) than glucose measurement in whole blood. All of our home devices actually measure the glucose content of whole blood. Most lab testing measures the glucose content of the plasma.

"Many currently marketed meters automatically display their readings (through a math algorithm built into the device) as plasma equivalent. Thus allowing one to better compare their meter results to those of lab testing. It's important that you know whether the meter you're using displays readings as whole blood equivalent or plasma equivalent."

http://www.fda.gov/diabetes/glucose.html

Whole Blood vs Plasma Measurements

So basically, this is what most of the human meters are providing you now--your reading displayed as plasma equivalent.

http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Gl...rs_for_animals

"In March, 2006, Abbott began marketing its AlphaTrak animal-validated glucometer. The validation process being accomplished through obtaining blood glucose test results over a period of time from dogs and cats and validating through averages of them as compared to Antech Laboratories' results. Over 200 dogs and 200 cats were tested to validate the AlphaTrak meter--in each group, only slightly more than 50 were diabetes patients.

"In the AlphaTrak system, it's the meter which is validated, not the test strips."

With the AlphaTrak, it's the knowledge that only slightly more than 12.5% of those whose values were recorded for validation purposes were diabetes patients, that I don't like.

My thought would be that one would be far less likely to see accuracy on the higher ends of the scale because of it, whereby when all of the human meters are tested before gaining FDA approval, they are field-tested in places like hospitals, diabetes clinics and the like.

I believe I'd have more confidence in animal-based meters as a whole if we didn't need to "get there" via validation.

[eyelostit]

Re: Daisy Vee

I'd love to have one of those "Dogs don't dump people stickers"

Welcome Mike and Daisy, my Niki has been blind for oh 3 yrs now I think, she adjusted well and you would never know she is blind, she jumps up in the car or SUV, jumps down, plays ball and soccer now, very active.

Hope Daisy is doing really well !!