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Insulin Analogs and Your Diabetes Control
Insulin analogs and just insulin are two different things. What is an insulin analog? An insulin type is a substance which resembles insulin and man-made. It has been altered in the molecular structure so that it has a better effect. What is the difference? Insulin as I have said many times, is of course a hormone that is released into your blood which the bloodstream then will transport through your body. Many hormones that means insulin too, is a protein. Hormones are made up of molecules which are amino acids. There are around 20 common types of amino acids. They are bound together in a sequence that forms both the structure and the function of proteins. Your human insulin molecule has two chains of which are the A chain, and then the B chain. These all have 21 amino acid molecules which are very specific. With this insulin type, differences in amino acids are added or else switched at certain positions along those chains of both A and B. The changes taking place, as they alternate your insulin action times, do not interfere with the molecules abilities to control blood sugar in the body. An insulin analog then, can be compared to the beef and pork insulin. This is different from your human insulin by three amino acids and one amino acid. Before the "birth" of the DNA technology used to manufacture human insulin, there was animal insulins that were used most frequently. Insulin lispro also known as Humalog, is a rapid acting insulin that is made by Eli Lilly. It was first on the drug market in the year 1996. Humalog has the same type of structure that is just like human insulin, all but for the amino acids at two positions on the B chain. The B28 and B29 have been turned around so that the molecules of this insulin do not associate from each other more quickly after injections. This leads to much faster absorption of the insulin into the blood. So regular insulin compared to Humalog acts much slower. Humalog takes effect within 15 minutes, which means you better prepare to eat quickly afterwords. Regular insulin in comparison, takes from 30-60 minutes. It also lasts for a longer span of time which is at least 10 hours. Humalog will stay in the system for no more than 4 hours. Insulin aspart is another insulin put out by Novolog, and was approved in the year of 2000. With aspart insulin, the amino acid aspartic acid is going to substitute for the amino acid proline at the B28 position. There is yet another rapid-acting insulin analog which is glulisine. The amino acid in this case at position B# is replaced by lysine and the lysine in position B29 is substituted by glutamic acid. This insulin appears in the blood earlier and also in higher concentrations than human insulin. When used at meals, the injection should be taken 15 minutes before, or else within 20 minutes time period of starting a meal.
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