New Development in the Treatment of Diabetes

Diabetes, often referred to by doctors as diabetes mellitus is a disorder of the metabolism that affects how the human body uses blood sugar (glucose). Glucose is vital to health because it's an important source of energy for the cells that make up one’s muscles and tissues. It's also the brain's main source of fuel. Diabetes is a serious complex condition that can affect the entire body.

The term “diabetes” means excessive urination and the term “mellitus” means honey. In diabetes, the pancreas produces too little insulin to enable all the sugar in the blood of a person to get into the muscle or other cells to produce energy. 

If one has diabetes, no matter what type, it means the person has too much glucose in his blood, although the causes may differ. The presence of too much glucose in the body can lead to serious health problems.

Much research has been carried out all over the world on the treatment of this disease. While a complete treatment has so far evaded researchers and scientist, methods on controlling the sugar level have been developed and put into practice. One method is to let the body have the insulin it wants through artificial means as it is the absence or low quantity of insulin in the body that hampers maintaining proper sugar levels in the body. However, research still continues to find a cure to this disease and progress is already on the way.

One firm is Medtronic that has developed a device that controls sugar levels in the human body. Medtronic is a medical device company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland but its operational headquarters is in Minnesota. The company is a global leader in medical technology. The firm has created an artificial pancreas to automize insulin injections.

The MiniMed 670g monitors the user’s blood glucose level on a small device that fits around the waistband. This device can then sense a rise in sugar levels triggering automatic delivery of insulin to regulate the patient’s system. Users can choose to be alerted to the injection, or they can simply trust the device to do its job.

Aside from the glucose sensor attached to the patient, there is also an insulin pump patch that is able to inject highly specific amounts of insulin doses to each patient per machines input.

Medtronic has tested the device with 124 patients over a period of six months seeing no adverse side effects and the technology working to according to specifications. Completion of this testing has now led the company to submit applications for approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which should hopefully be coming soon.

Patients are loving the autonomy MiniMed 670g presents back into their lives along with the lack of worry about subsequent hypoglycemic attacks. 

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