Drug Jelly May Replace Insulin Injections for Diabetics

[longknife]

As a sugar-rich foodstuff, jelly is not often seen as a good thing for diabetics. But a new gel-based method for administering drugs could cut back on injections for diabetics and virtually eliminate their blood sugar highs and lows. Scientists have come up with a new gelatinous drug form that releases a slow but regular dose of an insulin-regulating hormone. In mice, it kept glucose levels down for five straight days---120 times longer than the hormone alone. And the method could be used to deliver drugs to treat cancer and other diseases as well.

What great news! As one who pricks his finger twice each and every day, jabs a needle into me twice a day, and yet another every time I eat, I can't think of anything better. Read all the story @ Drug Jelly May Replace Insulin Injections for Diabetics : 80beats

 

[waltky]

Insulin pump users beware...

US Company Warns That Its Insulin Pumps Can Be Hacked
October 05, 2016 - The U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson, one of the biggest manufacturers of medical appliances, warned this week that its insulin pumps could be hacked, meaning unauthorized persons might be able to change insulin doses of thousands of diabetes patients.

The vulnerability affects only pumps that have wireless remote control, which uses unencrypted radio frequencies, but they are not connected to the internet. Recently it was revealed some pacemakers and defibrillators also may be open to hacking.

Hackers and digital security personnel attend the annual Black Hat conference for digital self-defense in Las Vegas, Aug. 4, 2011. At that time, a security researcher who is diabetic identified flaws that could allow an attacker to remotely control insulin pumps; now, Johnson & Johnson has warned that its pumps could be hacked.​

The company said the probability of unauthorized access to its insulin pumps "is extremely low," but it has nevertheless sent warnings to doctors' offices and more than 100,000 patients in the United States and Canada. Insulin pumps are wearable devices that automatically adjust the release of insulin according to a diabetic's level of physical activity.

US Company Warns That Its Insulin Pumps Can Be Hacked

See also:

Scientists Find More Accurate Way to Test Blood Sugar Levels
October 05, 2016 - In one-third of people with diabetes, the "gold standard" method for monitoring blood sugar levels is inaccurate. But scientists have found a way to fix the discrepancy, helping diabetics more effectively manage their disease.

There are 422 million people with diabetes worldwide, according to World Health Organization estimates, and they face such devastating complications of the disease as blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and limb amputation. Keeping blood sugar levels in a range that's as close to normal as possible is considered the best way to reduce the likelihood that a diabetic will have to deal with those complications. But researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital found in a study of 200 diabetics that the A1C test, considered the most accurate method for measuring glucose levels, is inaccurate in one in three people.

Three-month period

The A1C offers a snapshot of blood sugar levels based on a three-month analysis of glycated hemoglobin, or the hemoglobin to which glucose is bound. The test is considered more accurate than daily blood sugar levels, which can vary minute by minute. But when scientists compared daily glucose monitoring to the A1C, they found discrepancies based on the age of the red blood cells, according to John Higgins, a professor of systems medicine at Harvard and a clinical pathologist.

Judith Garcia, 19, fills a syringe as she prepares to give herself an injection of insulin at her home in Commerce, California​

Red blood cells live an average of 45 days. But they live longer in some people, prompting this comparison by Higgins. "I think a simplistic analogy is just a sponge sitting on a damp counter," he said. "The more water you have on your counter, the more soaked that sponge is going to get. But also if you leave that sponge on a counter even longer, it's going to soak up even more water."

So, the A1C level of a person whose blood sugar seems well-controlled day to day may actually be elevated if his red blood cells are older. "And the opposite is true as well," said Higgins. "If someone has had a really high level of blood sugar but his blood cells are pretty young, it may look like he is fine when in fact his blood sugar's been high." When the age of each person's red blood cells was factored in, the error rate in the A1C's three-month blood sugar reading was cut in half in the study. The findings were reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Continuous measurement

 

[waltky]

Helping bone healing in diabetics...

Protein Discovery Could Help Heal Bones in Diabetics
January 12, 2017 - Scientists have discovered that a protein that plays a crucial role in healing broken bones is not fully functional in diabetics. By applying the protein directly to fractured bones, researchers showed they could improve the healing and strength of bones in diabetics.

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California found that a protein called "hedgehog" helped mend bones in diabetic mice by stimulating the activity of skeletal stem cells. Michael Longaker, a professor of surgery and co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford, helped make the discovery and co-authored a study on the topic, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

A person receives a test for diabetes at a free medical clinic in Los Angeles.​

Longaker said the protein, when functioning properly, has the potential to address a serious problem in diabetics, whose bone problems are among the worst that doctors see. "As diabetes is exploding worldwide in terms of its incidence, I think this becomes more important as we have an aging population with diabetes," he said. Researchers studying a mouse model of diabetes noted that the animals had significantly lower numbers of skeletal stem cells to repair bone fractures. When the bones did finally heal, they were weaker and less dense than those of non-diabetic mice.

Poor signaling

In experiments, the researchers found that although the reduced numbers of stem cells were themselves fully functional, there was a problem with hedgehog proteins near the site of a bone break: They, too, were fewer in number and were only weakly signaling the master cells to repair broken bones. Excessive inflammation, the researchers found, was weakening the hedgehog proteins in the diabetic mice. They discovered that they could improve hedgehog proteins' signaling by increasing their numbers. To accomplish that, they developed a gel containing more hedgehog molecules that could be applied to broken bones.

Longaker said that when applied directly to the inside of broken bones, the gel helped with repairs in diabetic mice, and in healthy rodents as well. The release of the extra hedgehog proteins is need for only a short while, he added. Over three to four weeks, "it did rescue the fracture healing." Hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from diabetes, which causes a host of serious complications, including kidney failure, blindness and heart disease. The protein discovery could someday ease one serious complication for diabetics.

Protein Discovery Could Help Heal Bones in Diabetics