Let me share my easy way of remembering the approximate duration of action and time of onset for commonly used types of insulin. First, you need to remember the four main types of insulin in descending order of length or duration of action:
- Long acting Glargine and Levemir insulin
- Intermediate NPH insulin
- Short acting Regular insulin
- Ultra-short Aspart & Lispro Insulin
It’s easy to remember that Lantus and Levemir is given once a day, (it simulates basal insulin secretion rate of pancreas), so the duration of action is 24 hours !! That ‘2’ in ’24’ should remind you that their onset of action is around 2 hours. Knowing just these two things, you can quickly remember the same for the rest by simply halving the values down the line. Easy Peasy !!! This table shows you how to remember :
| Insulin | Lantus / Levemir | NPH (1/2 of Lantus) | Regular (1/2 of NPH) | Aspart / Lispro (1/2 of Reg) |
| Duration | 24 hours | 12 hours | 6 hours | 3 hours |
| Onset | 2 hours | 1 hour | 30 mins | 15 mins |
These are approximate values but are practical enough for making dosing decisions. By the way, it sure is exciting that insulin prices will be capped at lower prices in the US – hopefully, that means fewer patients showing up with DKA due to the unaffordability of insulin. I suspect however these companies will raise insulin prices slowly in the rest of the world to compensate!
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