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A Possible New Option for Type One Diabetics

About three million Americans have Type One Diabetes - a condition that makes it impossible to get energy from food.  Every day, 80 more people join the ranks, and there is no cure, but scientists at the University of Virginia may have a device that could make life for people with diabetes a whole lot easier. 

As a kid Justin Wood had heard about diabetes.   His mother was a nurse who specialized in treating the disease - teaching patients to give themselves regular shots of insulin so they could digest sugar.  He told his mom it sounded awful.

“Man, I would never want to take shots every day for the rest of my life.  I’d rather die.  And then Iend up in the hospital.”

The diagnosis - Type One Diabetes.  Without treatment, he would go on to develop a host medical problems, and - ultimately - die.  So at age 12, Wood began taking insulin shots, carefully controlling his diet and sticking himself several times a day to test his blood sugar.

“As you can see, I’ve got good scabs and scars.”

Today, he wears an insulin pump that makes treatment easier, but as he approaches middle age diabetes is still on his mind.

“Wondering how am I feeling, how’s the blood sugar feeling, what am I going to be doing later, what am I going to eat, am I going to be doing exercise, I gotta’ mow the lawn, and I have to telll my pump to dial back on the insulin, or I’m going to be sweating, shaking, needing some orange juice.”

It’s a tedious but essential way of life.

Now, scientists at the University of Virginia’s Center for Diabetes Technology hope to change that.  They come up with what’s called an artificial pancreas, replacing the organ that has failed in people with Type One Diabetes.  Dr. Boris Kovatchev says the advent of wireless technology and smart phones was key to the system he created.

“There is a continuous glucose monitor.  This is a little censor that sits on the skin of a person.  There is a smart phone which receives signals from that censor, does its calculation and tells an insulin pump to deliver the amount of insulin needed.”

Justin Wood was the first to try the artificial pancreas, and he was impressed.  It was no longer necessary to match his insulin intake with his consumption of carbohydrates.

“If I want to have lettuce for dinner and not have any carbs at all, I don’t have to do a thing.  T just sees that my glucose rate is staying flat, so it stays flat.”

More than a hundred people have tested the technology, and Kovatchev hopes to win FDA approval and have something on the market by 2018 - ten years after he introduced his first model.  He’s excited, because the National Institutes of Health have offered $20 million to any research team that can come up with an effective artificial pancreas, and after trials in the U.S. and Europe, he has the data to show his invention can do the job. 

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief