Diabetics must endure the pain of repeated insulin injections. A new invention by North Carolina State University (UNC) may end this torture. Researchers created the first "smart insulin patch." This thin, smart patch less than the size of a coin covers more than 100 eye-sized "mini-needles" filled with trace amounts of insulin. If your blood sugar levels are too high, you can detect insulin and release it quickly. Published in the minutes of the National Academy of Sciences
discovered that this new painless patch can last up to 9 hours in type 1 diabetic mice. Smart stickers need more clinical trials before they can be used for diabetics, but people have high hopes for it.
Diabetes affects 387 million people worldwide, and this number will increase to 592 million by 2035. Patients with type I and type II diabetes should regularly check their blood sugar levels and inject insulin. This process is painful, but not very accurate. Injecting the wrong dose of medicine can cause blindness, amputation, coma and even death.
The author of the paper, Professor Gu Zhen from the UNC School of Biomedical Engineering, said that this painless smart patch made of non-toxic and biocompatible materials is easy to work quickly and personalize. He said this method can treat diabetic patients. According to the Physicist Organisationetwork in reported on the 23rd that researchers created a "closed loop system" that directly connects the blood glucose monitor and the insulin controller to eliminate the possibility of human error. They imitated the working principle of the "human body's natural insulin generator" beta cells. It produces and stores insulin in small vesicles, senses increased blood sugar levels, and sends out a signal to release insulin like an alarm center. The function of artificial vesicles depends on two natural materials that are easy to find. One is hyaluronic acid (HA) found in many cosmetics, and the other is an organic compound commonly used in diagnosing 2-nitrodiimidazole (NI). They combined two materials into a new type of molecule. One end is hydrophilic, and the other end is hydrophobic. After mixing, many of these molecules will self-assemble into vesicles whose length is one hundred times the width of human hair, with solid insulin and glucose-sensitive enzymes inserted in them. When the blood sugar level rises, glucose enters the artificial vesicles, and enzymes convert gluconic acid into oxygen. Hypoxia makes the hydrophobic NI molecules hydrophilic. After the vesicle ruptures, the insulin is pushed into the subcutaneous capillaries. Due to mice are not as sensitive to insulin as humans, so researchers believe that the "smart insulin patch" can last longer to maintain blood sugar levels when tested in patients. Their goal is to have patients change the stickers every few days.