Artificial pancreas on their way
Artificial pancreas may be just a few years away to help diabetics monitor blood sugar levels and inject insulin.
Artificial pancreas may be just a few years away to help diabetics monitor blood sugar levels and inject insulin.
Researchers from Britain are working to link two technologies - continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pumps - into a seamless package. It is believed that this mechanism would greatly reduce the need for fingersticks and injections of insulin that diabetics endure several times a day.
For people with type-1 diabetes, care is needed to avoid swings in blood sugar levels. Especially in case of children, the parents have to wake up multiple times every night to check their children's glucose levels. If the levels go too low, the patient can pass out and even die. When blood sugar goes too high, it damages capillaries and eventually organs. Patients whose sugar levels regularly creep up suffer gradual and usually symptom-less damage until they go blind, or lose kidney function, suffer heart damage or perhaps lose a limb.
To test how the artificial pancreas would work, the researchers tested the device in patients with type-1 diabetes (an autoimmune disease caused when the body mistakenly destroys the insulin-making cells in the pancreas). A continuous glucose sensor was implanted under the skin of the patients, which transmitted blood sugar readings to a monitor while a computer calculated the right dose of insulin, which was then delivered by an insulin pump.
Though diabetics can now wear both continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, these two devices do not communicate with one another and so patients have to manually read the sugar levels and operate the pump. It is expected that with artificial pancreas, the insulin pump would also be able to quickly shut off if blood sugar falls too low. This mechanism would be a great aid to those suffering with severe type 2 diabetes.
National Institutes of Health
July 2008
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