Turning Diabetes Over to the Bionic Pancreas

Riva Greenberg
Huffington Post, 4/23/2012

I considered titling this “Anna Floreen Was Diabetes-Free for 5 Days,” because she was and now she’s not. And I’m curious what that transition has been like – picking up your chronic illness again after you dropped it from your shoulders and walked off into the sunshine, so to speak.

April 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, days I’m sure Anna Floreen will never forget, she was effectively “cured” of her Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Anna participated in the Massachusetts General Hospital Beacon-Hill study.

She was among approximately 30 T1D patients testing the performance of the “bionic pancreas” outside the hospital. She was, however, hooked up to an IV monitor overnight, restricted to a three-mile radius and had a nurse by her side at all times.

Read the rest of the article.

This is very exiting. It seems like this treatment is a potential game changer. More hope here than a cure that seems to never make it past the mouse in a lab. Hopefully they have adequate funding to develop the technology.

Hopefully this can be combined with faster acting insulin,more accurate cgms and a single pump that can dose both insulin and glucagon.