Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Day and night blood sugar patterns in healthy and diabetic cats
By Schuppisser, Carole et al.·Published in Journal of feline medicine and surgery·2025·Clinic for Small Animal Internal Medicine·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Comparison of continuous glucose monitoring profiles during the day and night in healthy and diabetic cats.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
A study monitored blood sugar levels in healthy and diabetic cats using a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) to check for low blood sugar episodes and understand glucose patterns. They found that both healthy and diabetic cats experienced low blood sugar at different times, but healthy cats showed more variation in their glucose levels at night. The diabetic cats with poor control had higher blood sugar levels throughout the day compared to those well managed. Overall, the CGMS helped identify fluctuations in glucose levels, which can be crucial for managing diabetes in cats.
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Abstract
ObjectivesThis study aimed to detect hypoglycaemia episodes and evaluate glucose dynamics and glycaemic variability in insulin-treated diabetic and healthy cats using a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS). Blood glucose curves are useful for managing insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (DM) but may miss the nadir and peak.MethodsA CGMS with a 7-day recording period (range 2.2-22.2 mmol/l) was implanted in six healthy and 10 insulin-treated diabetic cats to obtain 24-h glucose curves. For each cat, mean, minimum and maximum glucose concentration, SD and coefficient of variation (CV) were calculated for the daytime and night-time.ResultsMost diabetic cats removed sensors prematurely, but 24-h curves were obtained in all; the only adverse effect of the device was mild local skin irritation. In healthy cats, nights had higher SD (0.6 mmol/l [range 0.2-0.8] vs 0.4 mmol/l [range 0.2-0.6]; = 0.037) and CV (13% [range 5-23] vs 10% [range 4-16]; = 0.041) compared with the days; mean, minimum and maximum glucose concentration showed no diurnal-nocturnal differences. In diabetic cats, no differences were observed for mean, minimum and maximum glucose concentrations, SD and CV. Hypoglycaemia episodes (<3.5 mmol/l) occurred in five healthy and four diabetic cats, either during the day or night. Compared with well-controlled diabetic cats, those with moderate to poor control had higher mean and maximum glucose concentrations during the 24 h and had higher SD during the day than at night.Conclusions and relevanceContinuous glucose monitoring revealed increased nocturnal glycaemic variability in healthy cats but not in diabetic cats. Furthermore, cats with moderately to poorly controlled DM had higher diurnal glycaemic variability than those well controlled. Low glucose concentrations occurred in both groups and at any time, emphasising the benefit of 24-h glucose curves in diabetic cats.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41204810/