This past week, 3,800 people met in Madrid, Spain at the Advanced Technologies and Treatments in Diabetes (ATTD) conference. This is one of the top diabetes meetings every year and provided some interesting items on our horizon.
diaTribe published a nice preliminary summary of events.
https://diatribe.org/biggest-news-diabetes-technology-attd-2020-deep-dive-cgm-and-more
I found it interesting that some early results of an observational study I’ve been participating in were presented at this conference. This study has been collecting data from people using the do-it-yourself or DIY Loop system comprised of a CGM, insulin pump, a RileyLink radio frequency to Bluetooth translator, and an algorithm residing on an iPhone. The study includes people new to Loop as well as people like me who have been using it for longer. This study started collecting data about a year ago and will conclude on March 31, 2020.
Here are the initial results from diaTribe about the new user statistics.
New users (people in the study who had never used this closed-loop system before) showed:
- An A1C reduction from 6.8% to 6.5% after three months and to 6.4% after six months – and if you think that is not very much, think again!
- An increase in time in range from 68% to 73%, which is more than one hour per day spent in-range! These time in range benefits occurred in the first month of closed-loop use and were constant throughout the rest of the study.
- Benefits in A1C and time in range across all age groups.
- Improvements in user-reported outcomes, including measures of diabetes management distress, sleep quality, and fear of hypoglycemia. Not too many details were shared on this part and we look so forward to learning more!
It is important to note that people in the study were classified as having “well-managed” diabetes at the start of the study, meaning they had relatively low A1Cs (6.8% baseline) and were close to meeting time in range goals, and came from high education levels and socioeconomic status backgrounds. This underscores the need to improve access to closed-loop systems for broader groups of people with diabetes.
This is a nice summary and shows the growing influence of CGMs and automated insulin dosing (AID) systems both commercial and do-it-yourself (DIY) in the treatment of diabetes.