Animal Insulins

[MichaelJH]

Here in the UK, only a small, but significant, number of people are on animal (bovine/porcine) insulins. I was wondering if they are used much in India?

[sandybrown]

I learned a lot from a freelearn course on Insulin.

Lot of information on the UK site, This is not new! "The first injection given to a diabetic patient was in 1922 in Canada, where a team of Nobel Prize winning developers from the University of Toronto had been working on a treatment for the then untreatable type 1 diabetes"

diabetes.co.uk/insulin/anim...

[gangadharan_nair]

We are against cow and pig insulin in India!!! Insulin is one of the only two protein-hormone (the other being growth hormone) made by the pancreas. ... It was taken from the pancreases of animals, usually pigs (porcine or pork insulin) and cows (bovine or beef insulin).

[rnpath]

when safer human recombinant insulin is available,why settle for the second choice

[MichaelJH in reply to rnpath]

A number of people, including myself, cannot tolerate synthetic insulins so are on animal insulins. So it is first choice for them not second!