Copaxone and sugar?

[Spydre]

I went to the primary care doctor again today (UTI is gone so any remaining symptoms are from the flare), and he told me that my urinalysis last week showed sugar in my urine. He's checked my blood sugar and that was fine. So he wanted me to find out if Copaxone has a side effect of sugar in the kidneys "spilling over" into the urine?

[jessiesmom]

"Sugar" in the urine

You have got to be kidding me. The doctor wanted YOU to look into Copaxone's side effects? I am appalled. It seems to me that it is the job of a doctor to be aware of medication side effects. If he is not aware of the properties of a particular drug, THEN HE SHOULD FIND OUT.

Tell him to look at the Prescribing Information on the Shared Solutions website, call Teva, contact a pharmacologist, contact a physician at a comprehensive MS center, etc. You are not a trained medical professional and cannot properly interpret the medical information. If he is too lazy to look into this issue then I would personally find another doctor. Since this is your primary care physician I am assuming he is not the one that actually prescribed the Copaxone. He should probably inform the prescribing doctor of your test results and discuss this issue with him.

Let us know how this all works out for you. Just because you have MS doesn't mean you can't develop a separate and unrelated health issue. It is always best to be an informed patient. Good luck.

[Spydre]

To be fair, he's my primary care doc, and from conversations with him, I don't think he knows a lot about the treatments for MS. He was asking me if Copaxone gives me fevers, which I don't think is a side effect for anyone. But, he always looks for someone he can blame for all my medical problems. I had my first UTI under him, and he sent me to a urologist - even the urologist looked at me like, why are you here, you don't have problems. Hopefully, I won't get sick between now and the 28th, because as of the 28th, I get a new doc.

[jessiesmom]

Primary care physician

I stand by what I said in my 1st post. I think it is absolutely appalling that your primary care physician put the burden of investigating your blood chemistry issues on YOU. I am glad that you are getting a new doctor. It sounds like this one is lazy and only wants to treat the easy cases. I understand that many doctors are not very familiar with MS but he is seemingly making no effort to obtain some new knowledge that would benefit his patient - you.
Make sure your prescribing doctor (your neurologist?) has a copy of the blood test results that show the out of range levels. Could be that further testing is indicated.

[Spydre]

The weird thing is, this has happened before, when I was on Avonex. My doc then (who has since left the practice) did a fasting blood level, which was fine, and sent me home with a glucometer and watched those levels, which were fine, too. She never did figure out what caused it, but it was an isolated incident. But around that time my sodium levels dropped, both from my Trileptal and the Avonex. Don't know if both things were related or not.