The Artificial Pancreas and Normal Blood Sugar Levels, Every Diabetic’s Dream
For type-1 diabetics, can this pump improvement make it reality?
The development of what is being called an “artificial pancreas”, was reported in the pages of the February 2010 issue of Great Britain’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, bringing new hope to type-1 diabetics who depend on insulin injections every day to manage their disease.
Reference: “Closed-loop insulin delivery in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes”. Roman Hovorka et al. The Lancet, February 5, 2010
With the aid of 17 type-1 diabetic children and teenagers, spending 54 over-nights in hospital during which they experienced varying conditions to simulate real life situations, researchers at England’s Cambridge University have successfully tested a device described in The Lancet as “a milestone in the quest for the holy grail of artificial insulin delivery that started almost 50 years ago”. The results were compared with those of their regular subcutaneous infusion pumps.
With the aid of 17 young type-1 diabetics confined to a hospital setting but in varying conditions to simulate real life situations, researchers at England’s Cambridge University have successfully tested a device described in The Lancet as “a milestone in the quest for the holy grail of artificial insulin delivery that started almost 50 years ago”.
The importance of this development cannot be over-estimated although, apparently, it will still take some years to perfect and for it to pass through the necessary series of trials yet to be carried out.
If it can be brought into production it would fulfill the promise of a close to normal life with normal blood sugar levels for all insulin-dependent diabetics who choose to use it, most of whom are of the Type-1 form, also called juvenile diabetes.
Insulin and Type-1 diabetes
Insulin is needed to help the absorption of glucose into the cells of the body where it provides the energy required in the metabolic processes to sustain life.
Type-1 diabetes, a very serious disease usually diagnosed in childhood, is a disorder of the body’s immune system in which an organ called the pancreas becomes impaired and ceases to produce the hormone insulin. The result is that it becomes essential to administer artificial insulin by daily injections with a special insulin primed needle or by an insulin pump usually attached to the body. This also first involves a series of finger-pricks to obtain a blood droplet for testing to determine the amount of insulin actually required, if any.
To the non-diabetic person I would say:
If you could just imagine that you are a type-1 diabetic. The blood tests and the injection of insulin has to be done multiple times every day of your life in order to stay alive. You would then realize how wonderful the “artificial pancreas” would be for you. There are also many other diabetics, suffering from a different form of diabetes called Type-2, many of whom also have to inject insulin.
Depending on the types and amounts of food being consumed, blood sugar levels vary throughout the day and insulin is needed to maintain them within a safe range. Electronic subcutaneous insulin pumps have been in use for many years, able to deliver insulin at a slow and steady fixed rate throughout the day, adjustable as required by the diabetic after taking finger-prick test readings.
Providing a more accurate response to changing blood sugar levels
But the development of the new insulin pump device provides a better and more accurate response to changing glucose levels as they occur, signaled by a glucose sensor that monitors the fluctuating blood sugar levels, enabling the delivery of insulin doses that are matched to the glucose level detected.
The test results showed that the system maintained blood glucose levels within the normal range for 60 percent of the time compared to the usual 40 percent provided by the regular insulin pumps. Also the new device is able to prevent glucose falling to dangerously low levels while keeping overall blood glucose levels stable all the time. This is very significant for the reassurance of parents whose fear is that their child may fall into a coma because of a drop from normal blood sugar levels to dangerously low blood sugars at night while sleeping.
In the United States there are also several ongoing projects to develop and perfect an artificial pancreas able to provide a variable insulin delivery system in response to sensors that monitor changing blood glucose levels.
So let us hope that we are on the threshold of a new era for the insulin dependent diabetic. It cannot come too soon.
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