Insulin Detemir: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Insulin Detemir is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Injectable
- Sold as
- Levemir
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every insulin detemir product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Levemir.
What people report to the FDA about insulin detemir
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 2,941 reports naming insulin detemir, and the FDA flagged 86% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- blood glucose increased248 reports
- dyspnoea180 reports
- general physical health deterioration169 reports
- nausea164 reports
- hypoglycaemia145 reports
- vomiting129 reports
- acute kidney injury117 reports
- diarrhoea116 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean insulin detemir caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved September 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take insulin detemir with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run insulin detemir against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does insulin detemir come in?
Across the brands we track, insulin detemir is currently marketed as injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic insulin detemir?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled insulin detemir product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Insulin Detemir: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/insulin-detemir
- MLA
- “Insulin Detemir: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/insulin-detemir.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for insulin detemir on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.