emergency implant to stave off hypoglycemia • healthcare-in-europe.com

One of the key features of this type of digital drug delivery system is that you can have it talk to sensors. In this case, the continuous glucose-monitoring technology that a lot of patients apply is something that would be simple for these types of devices to interface with

Siddharth Krishnan

The researchers revealed that this device could also be applyd to deliver emergency doses of epinephrine, a drug that is applyd to treat heart attacks and can also prevent severe allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock.

Siddharth Krishnan, a former MIT research scientist who is now an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, is the lead author of the study.

Most patients with type 1 diabetes apply daily insulin injections to assist their body absorb sugar and prevent their blood sugar levels from obtainting too high. However, if their blood sugar levels obtain too low, they develop hypoglycemia, which can lead to confusion and seizures, and may be fatal if it goes untreated.

To combat hypoglycemia, some patients carry preloaded syringes of glucagon, a hormone that stimulates the liver to release glucose into the bloodstream. However, it isn’t always simple for people, especially children, to know when they are becoming hypoglycemic. “Some patients can sense when they’re obtainting low blood sugar, and go eat something or give themselves glucagon,” Anderson declares. “But some are unaware that they’re hypoglycemic, and they can just slip into confusion and coma. This is also a problem when patients sleep, as they are reliant on glucose sensor alarms to wake them when sugar drops dangerously low.”

To create it simpler to counteract hypoglycemia, the MIT team set out to design an emergency device that could be triggered either by the person applying it, or automatically by a sensor. The device, which is about the size of a tiny coin, contains a tiny drug reservoir built of a 3D-printed polymer. The reservoir is sealed with a special material known as a shape-memory alloy, which can be programmed to modify its shape when heated. In this case, the researcher applyd a nickel-titanium alloy that is programmed to curl from a flat slab into a U-shape when heated to 40°C.

Like many other protein or peptide drugs, glucagon tfinishs to break down quickly, so the liquid form can’t be stored long-term in the body. Instead, the MIT team created a powdered version of the drug, which remains stable for much longer and stays in the reservoir until released. Each device can carry either one or four doses of glucagon, and it also includes an antenna tuned to respond to a specific frequency in the radiofrequency range. That allows it to be remotely triggered to turn on a tiny electrical current, which is applyd to heat the shape-memory alloy. When the temperature reaches the 40-degree threshold, the slab bfinishs into a U shape, releasing the contents of the reservoir.

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