Killing with insulin: the cone snail’s story
“Rapid-acting” isn’t a phrase readily associated with snails, but the cone snail is capable of producing the shortest insulin ever observed in nature. And it’s used to kill.
Islet cell transplants becoming a welcome reality
It’s great to see stories where people are successfully undergoing islet cells transplants.
Kathleen Duncan has made the news this week for becoming the first woman in Scotland to receive an islet cell transplant.
A number of NHS centres around the UK are starting to roll out islet cell transplantation as a treatment procedure. The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary’s transplant unit, where Kathleen’s transplant was carried out is one of these with other islet cell transplant centres including London, Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle and Manchester.
Could Victoza become a viable treatment for type 1 diabetes?
This week there was news from a small study that showed that Novo Nordisk’s Victoza could serve as a viable treatment for type 1 diabetes, as a supplement to insulin.
People with type 1 diabetes can often find themselves dealing with large swings in blood sugar on a near-to daily basis which can be particularly difficult to control. The study on Victoza indicated that the drug helps to reduce the swings in blood sugar and improved overall blood glucose control.
Behind the wheel with diabetes
As someone on insulin I have to be particularly careful when driving. More than just testing blood sugar levels before each journey I’m conscious of where my sugar levels may be pretty much throughout the whole journey. I find I tend be pretty much constantly aware of how I’m feeling to make sure I avoid low blood sugars and any danger of an accident. Read More
What’s all this talk about cures?
Recently there has seen a swell of interest surrounding news that a cure for type 1 might be on the horizon.
The interest has been sparked by the news that University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that mice that produced no insulin did not experience high blood sugars if their glucagon receptors were blocked. Glucagon being the hormone which, in non-diabetic individuals, works in tandem with insulin to control blood sugar levels.
Glucagon could become insulin replacement for type 1 diabetes treatment
Sick day rules: A how not to guide
After New Year I noticed I’d become ill as a result of my blood sugars rocketing to above 17 mmol/l in the space of a few hours.
When I saw the number I thought what on Earth caused this? I thought that maybe it could be a virus but I’d need more than one reading to be sure so I gave myself a generous correction dose and waited until the next test to see if the sugars were still higher than they should be.
Sure enough the next test came in at 10 mmols/l and as I was starting to feel the symptoms of an illness I was fairly happy that I had indeed caught a small virus.
Are analogue insulins such a waste of money?
The recent news from Channel 4 and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) about whether the NHS is wasting millions of pounds of money by prescribing analogue insulins to type 2 diabetics has provoked a fair weight of discussion on the diabetes forum.
I’ve lost my long-acting insulin pen, what do I do?
This was the position I found myself in on Friday night. A good night out but somewhere along the line of the evening my insulin pen had gone missing.
Luckily I have a spare pen, unluckily it was safely tucked away in another location.
It’s a bit of a pain that certain insulins don’t work in certain pens or I could have got through the weekend by using one pen for two insulins. I was able to speak to the out of hours doctor who was very helpful and informed that I’d be able to visit the hospital’s ‘walk-in-centre’. However, the nearest hospital was sufficiently far away not to be accessible for me -or at least not without an expensive taxi ride.