Diabetes Testing

Generic products can help us manage the costly disease known as diabetes. In the past few years we got generic pills, including metformin. Now we have genetic test strips for our blood glucose meters.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved generic test strips that we can use with most of LifeScan’s OneTouch Ultra meters. Now you can buy them now.

LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, sells more blood glucose meters in the United States than any other meter manufacturer. You are more likely to find their meters on your health plan’s formulary than those made by any other company.

UniStrip Technologies in Charlotte, North Carolina, offers generic test strips for LifeScan’s four best-selling meters in the Ultra family: the OneTouch Ultra, Ultra2, UltraSmart, and UltraMini. PharmaTech Solutions (owned by Shasta Technologies) in Westlake Village, California, offers generic strips for three of these: the OneTouch Ultra, Ultra2, and UltraMini.

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The A1CNow meter for checking the key level of sugar in our blood is back. Chek Diagnostics, which changed its name from Polymer Technology Systems on March 27, just started shipping this meter that lets us check our A1C level at home.

I reported here on December 24 in “A Christmas Gift to People with Diabetes with Polymer” that the company had purchased the A1CNow business from Bayer Diabetes Care.

During the transition in ownership the availability of the A1CNow meter became spotty. Fortunately, the new owners didn’t change the device or its name. It is fortunate because they didn’t have to wait for the long approval process that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires for new and revised devices.

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Most of us take some supplements every day. But few of us have any idea what we are taking.

Help has begun to arrive.

Shopping for Supplements

Sixty-eight percent of American adults take nutritional or dietary supplements, according to a 2012 customer survey by the Council for Responsible Nutrition. I’m sure that the proportion is even higher among those of us who have diabetes.

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Most people who have diabetes track their blood sugar levels. Lots of us also track our weight, what we eat, and our exercise. But not many of us do anything useful with these numbers.

If we want to improve any of them, just writing them down and studying them will get us part of the way there. That’s because of the observer effect where simply observing something changes what we see.

Tracking Bears and Tracking Diabetes Have Lots in Common

But only when we act in response to our health tracking, does it began to be worth the effort. People with diabetes who don’t use insulin are wasting their time and money when they test their blood sugar, according to a study by the Cochrane Collaboration, the most respected group that reviews scientific studies. Two years ago I wrote about and linked that study in my post, “The Trouble with Glucose Testing.” The problem is that our medical professionals don’t usually teach us what our blood sugar levels should be and how to get there.

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The best way that we have to check our A1C level will live after all. In September I reported here in “The Key Diabetes Test Bites the Dust” that Bayer Diabetes Care would stop making the A1CNow device at the end of this year.

At that time I asked a Bayer spokesperson whom I had known for years if Bayer might sell the facility that makes the A1CNow device to another company. “Our business plans are confidential,” she replied.

But yesterday, December 23, Polymer Technology Systems Inc. in Indianapolis, Indiana, announced that “it has acquired the A1CNow family of products from Bayer Diabetes Care.” The announcement was a brief, six-paragraph press release to PR Newswire, and I have not been able to reach anyone at Polymer.

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The OneTouch Verio Sync may be the best blood glucose meter for people with diabetes. But before you rush out to buy one as a Christmas present for yourself or for a loved one, please note one problem. It’s not yet for sale.

The Verio Sync Paired with an iPhone

LifeScan Inc., the company that is making it, tells me that they expect their new meter to become available in January, February, or March of next year. LifeScan sells more blood glucose meters in this country than any other company, and the Verio Sync will join their three other current OneTouch meters. They are the OneTouch Verio IQ, the OneTouch Ultra Mini, and the OneTouch Ultra 2 (LifeScan also developed the OneTouch UltraLink, which works with a Medtronic insulin pump, and the OneTouch Ping meter remote that works with the Animas insulin pump).

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