Freestyle Libre allergy

purplechrain
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 15:15:36 +0000
C/GM

Freestyle Libre Adhesive Allergy

My daughter started having a reaction to the adhesives at the end of 2018, about a year after she started using the Libre. We are in Canada so she was using the 14 day sensors from the beginning. I am not sure whether Abbott changed something in their formula. The sensors started leaving a circle of raw skin underneath and the resulting skin damage does not heal well. We tried Flonase recently which seemed to help a bit, so this time we squirted multiple layers of Flonase on her skin before she inserted the sensor. She has about a week left on the sensor now. She said it’s been itchy so I am assuming that there is something going on underneath the sensor. I am hoping that it will be better than before. If not, we’ll have to try something else.

I just discovered this forum because the same thing happened to me. I’m also Canadian and developed T1D just under 2 years ago when I was 29. I was using the 14-day Freestyle Libre starting in April 2018 with no issues. By August they were occasionally coming loose early, seemingly due to the humidity/sweat, but I still wasn’t having any skin reactions.

In late 2018 - November or December-ish, I started having circles of red/irritated skin underneath when I took it off and sometimes they would come off early. The irritated skin was itchy but not “raw” per se. When this happened I would sometimes also be getting abnormally high readings from the sensor that didn’t match my finger-prick blood tests. (This happened with more than one sensor and I made sure to rotate arms.)

I took a few weeks off to let the irritation heal fully and then installed a new sensor last week. Within under 24 hours, I was seeing redness around the sensor and getting bad readings, so I took it off and it pulled two patches of skin off with it - definitely softer and more raw.

I didn’t think it was an allergy because I didn’t have any issues with it for the first 8 months, so it’s helpful to learn that it’s possible to develop them later. What are Tegaderm and Mastisol? Is there a link anyone can provide that sets out a list of possible solutions and how to use them?

Thanks so much.

6 posts - 4 participants