Daily injections of insulin will soon be a thing of the past for people who suffer from diabetes. Devices that deliver insulin without needles are already on the market, but it would be better still for diabetics to be equipped with a device that doesn?t require the user?s intervention at all. Such a device would monitor blood sugar level constantly and introduce exactly as much insulin into the bloodstream as is needed for good health, without relying on the user to apply the right dose at the right time. In a report in the 9 December 1998 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Kazunori Kataoka of the University of Tokyo and colleagues describe a new material that acts both as a sugar sensor and an insulin-releasing agent. When the material ?smells? sugar, it automatically delivers a dose of insulin.
Insulin-dependent diabetes is the inability of one?s pancreas to produce insulin in response to rising concentrations of sugar in the blood. Insulin is an enzyme that plays a key role in the metabolization of glucose - the process by which it is broken down to carbon dioxide and water with concomitant release of chemical energy. The dream-machine of diabetes treatment is a miniature device that can be implanted under the skin to administer insulin whenever the need arises, without the user even noticing: Kataoka and colleagues have synthesized a ?smart? polymer gel that does exactly that.
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