relationship b/w insulin and prednisone

Jolie, BSN · May 1, 2009

This is answered in virtually every med-surg textbook, drug reference book or by doing a Google Search. Try "prednisone, insulin" to find your answer.

nlion87 · May 1, 2009

in people with diabetes one of the functions of this class of steroids is to raise the blood sugar or prevent it from falling. In a person with type 2 diabetes, it may cause a severe rise in the blood sugar. It is often difficult to predict which person will have a substantial blood sugar rise and which will not, and how high the rise will be. You have to look at the options and the trade-offs in the individual situation about how to handle that: In some situations, there may be no other option but to take the prednisone and either accept the rise in the blood sugar or use diabetes drugs to prevent the blood sugar from rising or to treat it once it happens. Ideally, I would suggest monitoring the blood sugar more frequently when starting the prednisone and adding to the diabetes medicine promptly to counter-act the rise at the advice of your health care provider. There are additional decisions that have to be made if one were to use prednisone in a person who is either not on diabetes medicines or is at the maximal dose of the medicine they use: is an additional drug, including insulin, needed to use the prednisone safely? In some people, one might judge that the benefits expected from the steroid are not sufficient to warrant these effects. clearly, it takes good judgement and experience to sort out these alternatives.