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Home » Diets that Work » Trial of artificial pancreas gives diabetes patients a break

For Terra Hillyer, who has Type 1 diabetes, enrolling in a clinical trial for a new medical device called the artificial pancreas provided a glimpse of what life might be like without the constant checks of blood sugar levels and infusions of insulin that currently mark her days.

The first thing I do when I wake up is check my blood sugar, Hillyer says. It is the background noise of my life.

Except for one day recently, when the mother of two checked into the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara. There, under medical supervision, she allowed herself to be hooked up to an experimental device that might help turn back the clock to the time before she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 17.

In people with Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas fails to produce insulin, a key hormone in the regulation of blood sugar. As a result, patients need to carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and administer insulin on their own. The artificial pancreas is designed to manage the administration of insulin and control the users blood sugar automatically -- meaning that the participants, for the first time since childhood, could put their blood sugar readings out of their minds.

I called it my diabetes spa day, Hillyer said with a laugh. The artificial pancreas -- made by Animas Corp., a unit of Johnson & Johnson -- is really a combination of two state-of-the-art technologies in diabetes management: the continuous glucose monitor, which measures blood sugar regularly, and the insulin pump, which can be programmed by its user to deliver a predetermined amount of insulin.

Currently, people using these devices have to read their glucose monitor and then make a decision about how much insulin they need. And they must do this constantly -- potentially dozens of times per day, depending on their diets, activity levels and other factors. Sleep is a problematic time, since users cannot monitor their levels.

The artificial pancreas removes these burdens: the readings of the glucose monitor are passed to the insulin pump, and an onboard computer determines the appropriate insulin dose. Animas device also utilizes a proprietary algorithm that aims to predict the future course of a users blood sugar, allowing insulin levels to change well in advance of any complications.

While testing the device in Santa Barbara, volunteers were able to observe how the artificial pancreas took over the management of their blood sugar.

It was fascinating to see how the program thinks, said Kirk Martin, another volunteer. Im sitting there turning my life over to this machine, and you say, I hope its right. But you can see on the monitor that its right, so you acquiesce.

The results from the Animas trial, presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Assn. in Philadelphia, were positive, though limited in scope. The researchers showed only that the device was able to keep the participants blood sugars within an acceptable range, without any safety risks, for 24 hours.

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Trial of artificial pancreas gives diabetes patients a break

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Home » Diets that Work » Trial of artificial pancreas gives diabetes patients a break