Artificial pancreas could soon be available to diabetes sufferers

Fri, 15 Apr 2011
A new artificial pancreas could soon be helping sufferers of diabetes control blood glucose levels at night following a recent study.

The device automatically regulates blood glucose levels by releasing insulin when alerted to high levels of glucose and withholding it when levels are low.

Currently people with Type 1 diabetes have to inject insulin several times a day, meaning they cannot control glucose levels while asleep, leading to increased risk of hypoglycaemia .

The artificial pancreas has now been successfully demonstrated for the first time in a study led by University of Cambridge researcher Dr Roman Hovorka.

It showed a 22 per cent improvement in the time participants using the device kept their blood glucose levels in a safe range, halving the time they spent with low blood glucose levels.

Diabetes UK director of research Dr Iain Frame said: "We now need to see an extension of this study, one which tests larger numbers of people, and then take it out of the hospital and into the home setting."

There are 2.8 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK and an estimated 850,000 people who have the condition but are unaware of it.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.