Addition of rapid-acting insulin to basal insulin therapy in type 2 diabetes: indications and modalities

There are many reasons to believe that in the near future, the treatment of patients with Type 2 diabetes will be characterised by an increased use of insulin therapy. To ensure that insulin regimens are acceptable to patients, and implemented by physicians, they should be as simple and efficient as possible. Simplicity is synonymous with the regimen of once-daily basal insulin glargine given at any time of the day (at the same time each day). With such a strategy, the dose is adjusted by titrating to target fasting blood glucose values of 5.0 - 7.2 mmol/L (90 - 130 mg/dL). When these targets can no longer be achieved with reasonable doses of long-acting insulin, a rapid-acting insulin analogue should be added at meal times. A step-by-step strategy can be used; it is recommended that initially, a single daily prandial bolus of a rapid-acting insulin analogue is administered before the meal that leads to the highest post-meal blood glucose excursions. Further boluses can be added at other meal times as necessary, i.e, when post-meal blood glucose values remain above 10.0 mmol/L (180 mg/dL) and 7.8 mmol/L (140 mg/dL) at mid-morning and 2h-post-lunch or post-dinner times, respectively. This stepwise strategy may eventually lead to a standard basal-bolus regimen with 3 pre-meal injections of rapid-acting insulin analogues, a potentially small trade-off for achieving fairly-well controlled diabetes.