For people with advanced diabetes, every day is a balancing act of carefully monitoring their blood sugar and responding by taking insulin through painful injections or cumbersome pumps.
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The smart insulin patch is only about the size of the penny but it contains a 100 little needles, each of which are only the size of an eyelash. More work will need to take place before the patch is ready for human use. “The whole system can be personalised to account for a diabetic’s weight and sensitivity to insulin,” he added, “so we could make the smart patch even smarter”.
Aronne and colleagues evaluated six women and five men with metformin-treated type 2 diabetes and overweight or obesity to determine whether consuming protein before carbohydrates or vice versa affects postprandial glucose and insulin excursions.
Patients with diabetes have to control their blood sugar by regularly pricking their finger and giving themselves insulin shots.
The new device imitates the body’s natural insulin generators known as beta cells, which release insulin and behave as “alarm call centers” that sense when blood sugar is too low.
The device, developed at the University of North Carolina, automatically detects high blood glucose levels and administers insulin appropriately, through a system of micro-needles.
The first material was hyaluronic acid or HA, a natural substance that is an ingredient of many cosmetics. The second material was 2-nitroimidazole (NI), an organic compound commonly used in diagnostics. These molecules proved to self-assemble into a vesicle with the hydrophobic ends pointing inward and the hydrophilic ends pointing outward.
Then in each vesicle, researchers inserted a core of solid insulin and enzymes specially created to sense glucose.
In lab experiments, when blood sugar levels increased, the excess glucose crowded into the artificial vesicles. Once the oxygen was depleted the hydrophobic NI molecules turned hydrophilic, causing the vesicle to fall apart and release insulin into the blood stream. Within these needles are microscopic sacks of insulin and glucose-sensing enzymes.
The little needles will pierce through the skin surface and gain access to the blood via the capillaries without causing any discomfort. These insulin shots are sometimes painful and inaccurate. “Unfortunately, we’ve found that it’s hard to get people to change their eating habits”.
The combination of feedback-controlled insulin delivery and painless skin patches is “exciting and innovative”, said Samir Mitragotri, director of the Center for Bioengineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. If blood sugar levels often spike too high, this can lead to serious complications over time, including heart disease. The researchers have stated that their eventual goal is to develop smart insulin patches that would only have to be changed every few days.
“People with diabetes are not required to fast during Ramadan, but those who choose to do so need to take particular care as fasting for this length of time will increase the risk of their blood glucose levels rising or falling, which can be very unsafe, and of them becoming dehydrated”.
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The research was funded by a pilot grant from the NC TraCS Institute and a “Pathway to Stop Diabetes” Research Award from the American Diabetes Association.
