Indeed, the pen is mightier...

“LANTUS® SoloSTAR® and APIDRA® SoloSTAR®, the results of over four years of intensive development, have been designed in dialogue with patients, nurses and doctors and meet the high standards of the industry,” said Paul Jansen, Global Head Medical Devices, Sanofi-Aventis.

For some people with diabetes, self-injection can be a barrier to acceptance of insulin therapy. “The pen is a marriage of sleek, handsome design styling with easy, but advanced sophisticated technology for dispensing insulin to people with diabetes,” says Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, President Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design. “SoloSTAR® represents a design for social good and for humanitarian concerns”.

John Fagan, General Manager, Sanofi-Aventis South Africa, says, “We always knew we had a superior insulin, the next quest was to develop a superior pen to assist patients in the safe delivery of our insulins. The pen has done this for us.”

When choosing a specific insulin pen for an individual patient, clinicians consider the patient's insulin regimen, lifestyle, and other factors that may affect the ability to use a particular device, such as manual dexterity and visual acuity. Therefore certain characteristics of a given insulin pen may make it preferable for patients. The pen's design, using breakthrough technology, contributes to making this patients' and clinicians' choice easier by providing a delivery option that may be more acceptable and more convenient to use in comparison with other delivery systems, thus may promote patient compliance, which could help achieve and maintain glycemic control.

A recent survey of the pen's use in everyday clinical practice, involving more than 2,000 people with diabetes (16% with manual dexterity problems and 15% with poor eyesight not corrected by glasses) showed that more than 95% of participants declared to be “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with using the pen, irrespective of the diabetes type or previous device experience. The same survey found that healthcare professionals involved in teaching people how to use the product found it to be easy learn and easy to use.

The pen also operates with a lower injection force and a recent study found that it required 31% less injection force than the Novo Nordisk FlexPen® and 54% less force than the Eli Lilly Humulin/Humalog pen.

“Insulin injection with SoloSTAR® brings flexibility, satisfaction for the patients, and an opportunity for earlier initiation of insulin therapy which may contribute to better long term glycaemic control”, Denis Raccah, Professor of Endocrinology, University Hospital Sainte Marguerite, France, added.