An All-New Insulin Administration Method for Type I Diabetes that may be here before Long

To hundreds of thousands of parents all over the world the boss of a child with diabetes , a sound night’s sleep is something they have long forgotten to even imagine doable. Children with diabetes can during the night, have their blood sugar levels fall so low as to place their lives in danger, all while their parents catch up on little sleep. Dutiful parents have no choice but to keep constant vigil turn by turn during the night time, to make certain that the child wakes up alright the next day. But there’s new hope. There exists a new device now made doable by the invention of a new computer programming algorithm. A device programmed with the algorithm will be able to measure a child’s blood glucose levels through the night, and exercise control over an attached insulin administration pump to rectify any imbalances. The Lancet, the British medical research magazine, has just reported on this improve, and predicts that medical device manufacturers will quickly take this up on its promise.

 

What people had before, for children with juvenile diabetes (or Type I diabetes),  was a blood glucose level monitor that did a continuous monitoring job all night, and the second device, an automatic insulin administration pump that worked independently of the first. Juvenile diabetes is something children get shortly after being born. Children need such a complex arrangement, because low blood glucose levels, or hypoglycemia, can send a child into tremors, seizures, and potentially, even a coma, or death. And yet, children, by the way their very bodies work, have their blood glucose levels vary so widely, that a simple automated pump, can never do a reasonable job.

 

In an experiment, a group of children was placed on this device, and another, on the standard treatment. A number of children on the standard treatment sounded the alarm for dangerously low blood glucose levels that the system was unable to catch in time. There are about 500, 000 people in America with Type I diabetes, who use some variation of the standard insulin administration  setup. One old process of blood glucose detection, involved using a device that actually sampled blood from a pin prick on the skin, a number of times a day. But  new technologies measure blood glucose levels with sensors attached to the skin.

 

What happens if you use such a sensor along with an automatic insulin administration pump, is this: if the blood sugar levels fall, the device sounds the alarm. If your child fails to wake up to such a warm, the pump will keep sending insulin into the blood to metabolize the non-existent sugar. This becomes a very dangerous condition. The new system places both devices in one package, working together, that are able to measure blood glucose levels properly, and then decide regardless of whether to continue with insulin administration. Johnson & Johnson, and the Artificial Pancreas Project, are working together to bring such a product to the market, in a cell-phone sized device.

 

It may appear relatively mysterious why this has not been feasible before;  but monitoring blood glucose levels reliably, and preparing insulin administration in real time, is it no small matter. Chip technology and computer programming technology needed to advance sufficiently before this could happen.

Tagged with: Diabetes • insulin • type 1 diabetes

Filed under: Diabetes

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