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Mixing & materials
Insulin syringe (U-100)
Insulin syringe (U-100) - A fine syringe with a fixed needle, scaled in „units". On a U-100 syringe, 100 units equal exactly 1 ml - the usual syringe for subcutaneous peptide doses.
Also called U-100U100insulin needleunits
An insulin syringe is a small syringe with a thin, fixed needle and a scale in units. You mainly use it when you want to inject small active ingredients right under the skin - such ingredients are called peptides (short chains of amino acids, e.g. insulin or certain hormone medicines). In technical language, this kind of injection under the skin is called subcutaneous.
U-100: the number that matters
„U-100" means the scale is built so that 100 units = 1 ml. So 50 units is 0.5 ml and 10 units is 0.1 ml. A unit mark measures volume, not a drug amount directly. Think of the scale like a measuring cup: it only shows how much liquid you draw. How much active ingredient (e.g. in milligrams) is in that liquid depends on how much powder you dissolved in the water beforehand - in other words, how concentrated your mix is.
Common mistakes
- Equating units with milligrams or micrograms - here units are a volume scale. Only the concentration (mg/ml) turns them into a drug dose.
- Using a differently scaled syringe (e.g. U-40) without converting.
Wording mix-ups
Syringe „units" are pure volume marks on the scale - don't confuse them with the biological „International Units (IU)" used for some active ingredients.