Sounds like a good news, Oral insulin is getting on tracks very soon...
I hope it desn't taste as horrible as the present liquid insulin smells!
Lois
I've been hearing about this breakthrough for years. And the article, as is, is junk science. While it talks about the problem of the digestion of insulin and the difficulty in absorption through the intestinal wall, it makes no reference at all to how these problems are avoided other than using the buzz words "nano-particles".
"Coming soon" is not really any different than the "cured in 10 years" they used to spout in the 60s.
Just as an aside, I also have problems with an article that couldn't even be translated without significant spelling mistakes. I know a number of medical translators, and this was not professionally done.
Another advance in the treatment of mice with diabetes. Unfortunately, lots of things that work on mice don't seem to pan out in humans.
With my pump I can exactly calculate my basal and bolus. I wonder how that will work with a pill. When the first inhaled insulin came out, the doses were in multiples of 5 units. Not so helpful for those with T1 anyway.
In the grand scheme of managing my T1D, taking insulin injections is nowhere near the top of my list of negative aspects.
If oral insulin had the same variability of action that injected insulin does, what's the point? These kind of articles seem to play on the visceral fear that many in our society have about needles. As I've said before, after the first 10,000 or so pokes, it's a non-event. Oral insulin (if and when it ever appears) does not move the science much toward a cure; it's a minor footnote.
I agree Terry. It seems to me that the less professional/realistic the article, the more they go on about the "horrors" of needles.
It's as if the non-D world thinks that taking shots has to be the absolute worst thing about diabetes! They have no idea.
I agree with Terry. I couldn't care less about taking shots or being connected to a pump 24/7; this is not the problem of Type 1 diabetes. The problem is the huge amount of effort that needs to be put into managing it, and the huge amount of blood sugar variability that happens despite this effort. Neither of these problems are going to be helped simply by changing the route by which insulin is administered.
There used to be an inhaled insulin, which was taken off the market because it caused lung problems. Yet I still keep hearing about inhaled insulins...
And pills? How quickly are they going to work? How far in advance would you have to take it?
Nano technology has great promise for these kinds of things, but how would they get it to transport across the intestinal wall if they're so big?
Gotta love popular science. They make things sound so simple...
Yup. The action of an oral insulin would take forever even in the best od circumstances.
I was on an inhaled insulin study a few years ago. It was supposed to be a breakthrough where no one would want to inject again. I never had lung issues but there are so many difficulties with the administration. Absorption and length of action were impossible to figure out. If you coughed you had no idea how much insulin you were getting.
Also the smallest foil pack was equivalent to 3 units. Most full meals are around 5 units so corrections were difficult at best. I would try to inhale half etc.
all these issues will sure to be evident in oral insulin too. What food you eat and how much acid is present and how fast ur stomach empties. Diabetics often have varying degrees of gastro paresis.
I can’t imagine it can be a better choice than injections or pump infusions.
That article looked like a poorly translated fake site to draw hits for advertising.
There were no real studies or scientific data. I would not put any trust in this
I love the line about "painful shots." That's the least of my worries. Insulin needles are so thin you barely feel them.
All the criticisms are true, and I agree with all of them.
I'd just like to point out, though, that given the choice between all the rigamarole with an injection vs. a blast from an inhaler or popping a pill (or squirting something into my water glass, etc.), I'd take the latter over the injection without more than a nanosecond's thought.
I share Terry's perspective on what truly vexes and exhausts us diabetics. However, I think the issues solved by these alternatives go far beyond just "the pain of a needle stick".
The pain's nothing. The inconvenience and social stigma, on the other hand, are huge issues for me (and I suspect many, many other diabetics). Going out to dinner and pulling out my insulin inhaler has the same enormous appeal and advantage over heading to the bathroom to do the entire injection routine, in the same way that getting on the Omnipod was incredibly liberating.
Indeed, all things being equal (i.e. the medical efficacy of the approaches), I'd still choose the Omnipod over an oral or inhaled approach -- mostly because of the greater control I have with things like extended boluses.
However, focusing on the pain of a shot as the reason for these newer approaches I think seriously misses the point -- by a wide margin.
Yeah, and I can't imagine that oral/inhaled insulin could be dosed in teensy tiny doses that a pump can deliver. Even syringes can do smaller doses than from I heard about inhaled insulin