On the Road with the Artificial Pancreas

He is the most interesting man in the world.The "he", fyi, is Ed Damiano...a biomedical engineer turned Artificial Pancreas guru, and father of a type 1 child with diabetes. (and a speaker this year at Friends for Life. Perhaps he has been other years, but I've been kind of out of the loop. I was excited to hear his talk this year, to find out exactly how the Massachusetts clinical trials are going. (very well, apparently. On track to submit to the FDA in 2016, perhaps on time to be approved in time for his son to go off to college in 2017). And I was impressed by his drive (and smarts), but namely, I needed one very important question answered before I threw my approval to this particular artificial pancreas attempt.NEWS FLASH: THERE ARE MULTIPLE ARTIFICIAL PANCREAS TRIALS GOING ON ALL OVER THE US, AND THE WORLD. I'VE GOTTEN A BIT TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT MEDTRONICS VEO SUSPEND(NO THANKS, DON'T TRUST IT) AND YES, EVEN DAMIANO'S. THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HAS A VERY PROMISING ONE, THAT MIGHT JUST BEAT THE SOCKS OFF DAMIANO'S. Back to the topic at hand..oh yes, Damiano's trial. His system uses a dual chamber glucogon/insulin combo, and releases each, as needed. (other systems are solely focused on the insulin/suspend parts) My concern would be as to whether or not getting all that glucagon might make the user sick/nauseated, which Damiano assured me that the amount of glucogon released in the "microspurts" was only 1/8 of a standard glucogon dose and hadn't made anyone sick, to...
Source: The D-Log Cabin - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs