MIT’s glucagon implant
A new smart implant of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is able to eject, autonomously, a life -saving medicine, when diabetics most need it.
A hypoglycemia It is a condition in which low levels of blood glucose can cause dizziness, weakness and tremors. It often occurs due to excess insulin, whether produced by the body or injected in excess.
There are ways to treat it quickly, but if hypoglycemia occurs when sleeping or affecting children who cannot inject themselves with a glucagon injectionIt can lead to a series of disorienting symptoms and more dangerous complications, until death.
To counteract this situation, a team of engineers of a device the size of a currency that can be safely implanted in the body to automatically manage a glucagon dose when a sensor detects that blood glucose levels are going down too – and potentially Save the patient’s life.
Innovation was revealed in a study in Nature Biomedical Engineeringthis Wednesday.
Innovation is a compact device, designed to be implanted under the skin, which weighs only 2 grams and has a small glucagon reservoir – a hormone that stimulates the liver to release glucose in the bloodstream.
This is what people with hypoglycemia, including some people with type 1 diabetes, always carry with them in the form of a preloaded syringe to inject whenever they feel the symptoms of the disease to appear.
The difference here is that the Glucagon in the reservoir is a powder version specially developed, which stable for longer.
As details A, the small implant includes an antenna that receives a sign of a remote drive or a system that works with a glucose monitor. This signal turns on an electric current and heats the reservoir seal to its temperature threshold. At that time, glucagon is released in the body.
The investigators tested the device implementing it in diabetic rats and verified helped the Standardize blood sugar levels in 10 minutes after being triggered when glucose readings were descending.
The device also proved to be equally Effective in the distribution of epinephrine Powder, which can help to quickly treat deadly allergies.
The device worked as well as implant for four weeks, even after forming scar fabric around it. But investigators think the device could last much longer.
“The idea is to have enough doses that can provide this rescue event for a significant time. We don’t know exactly what this period is – perhaps a year, perhaps a few years,” said the investigation leader, Siddharth krishnanquoted by New Atlas.
This device saves those who cannot manage glucagon injections alone or in time.
It can also make life easier for those who live with diabetes and use continuous glucose monitors as it can eliminate the need to inject glucagon or even manually trigger it.
The device can, in turn, be designed to receive signs of these devices and administer a dose without the patient having to intervene.
