Word: insulin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Artificial pancreas. Responding to shifting levels of sugar in the blood, the pancreas constantly adjusts its secretion of insulin, delivering more during meals, when larger quantities are needed, less during exercise or sleep. Daily insulin injections can correct a deficiency, but are not the whole answer: often the insulin level is above or below what it should be, and the blood's sugar fluctuates wildly, probably aggravating the diabetic's other problems...
Yale's Philip Felig and other doctors are now helping nature by fitting juvenile diabetics with miniature battery-powered pumps that continuously trickle insulin into their bodies. Weighing barely a pound, the artificial pancreases are worn on the belt or carried in a shoulder...
...pumps tap a 24-hr, insulin supply, feeding it at a slow, steady rate via a thin tube that ends in a needle inserted under the skin of the abdomen or thigh. Before meals, patients can override the pre-set instructions and briefly step up the dosage by pressing a button. One incidental benefit, reports Felig: blood fats, including cholesterol, seem to return to normal during treatment...
Pancreatic cell transplant. The problem in most juvenile diabetics is that the insulin-producing cells within the pancreas, called the islets of Langerhans, are no longer functioning properly. (In adult diabetics, insulin supplies are generally adequate, but somehow the body is unable to release them or use them properly.) Doctors have tried transplanting fresh islets from healthy pancreases, but the immune system tends to reject them...
...devised a way to encourage islet survival-at least in laboratory animals. Taking healthy islets from rats, the team "incubated" them at room temperature for seven days, then injected them into diabetic animals, along with an immunosuppressive serum. More than 100 days later, the transplanted islets were still producing insulin in the diabetics, whose condition improved markedly. The next major question: Will this successful experiment in rats also work...