Biomedical engineers and diabetes doctors from the University of the North Carolina (UNC)
School of Medicine and North Carolina State have developed an insulin patch that is capable
of detecting increases in blood sugar levels
and secreting insulin doses into the bloodstream when needed. The research was
announced on June 22, 2015, and was published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
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| Smart Insulin Patch to Give Diabetics Respite from Insulin Shots |
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The patch is a thin square
no larger than a penny. It contains more than 100 tiny needles that are
approximately the size of eyelash. The “microneedles” contain microscopic
storage units for insulin. The units contain enzymes that sense glucose levels
and rapidly release insulin when blood sugar levels become too high. The
microneedles penetrate the skin’s surface to tap into the blood flow through
the capillaries just below the skin surface. In a mouse model of type 1
diabetes, the patch lowered blood glucose for up to nine hours.
“We have designed a patch
for diabetes that works fast, is easy to use, and is made from nontoxic,
biocompatible materials,” said co-senior study author Zhen Gu, PhD, a professor
in the Joint UNC/NC State Department of Biomedical Engineering. “The whole
system can be personalized to account for a diabetic’s weight and sensitivity
to insulin so we could make the smart patch even smarter.”
While the approach does
show great promise, researchers say that more pre-clinical tests and subsequent
clinical trials are needed before the patch can be administered to human
patients. “Injecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant
complications like blindness and limb amputations, or even more disastrous
consequences such as diabetic comas and death,” John Buse, MD, PhD, co-author
of the study and the director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center.
Researchers gave one set
of mice a standard insulin injection and measured blood glucose levels
that returned to normal and then quickly rose into the hyperglycemic range.
They tested another set of mice with the patch and observed that blood glucose
levels were brought under control within thirty minutes and stayed level for
several hours. The researchers also found that the patch could be fine-tuned to
change blood glucose levels in a certain range by changing the dose of the
enzyme contained in each microneedle. They found the patch was not as hazardous
as insulin injections, which can cause blood glucose levels to plummet to
dangerously low levels if administered too often.
“The hard part of diabetes
care is not the insulin shots, or the blood sugar checks, or the diet but the
fact that you have to do them all several times a day every day for the rest of
your life, said Buse, the director of the North Carolina Translational and
Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute and past president of the American
Diabetes Association. “If we can get these patches to work in people, it will
be a game changer.”
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| Blood Glucose Levels Meter |
Researchers speculate that
the patch’s ability to stabilize blood sugar in human patients could last
longer than in mice because mice are less sensitive to insulin than humans. Gu
said that their goal is to develop a smart insulin patch that only needed to be
changed every few days.
Source: http://m.edtreatmentindia.com/
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