Artificial pancreas is “life-changing” for children with diabetes

By Carissa Wong.

A child is holding a phone.

The University of Cambridge.

An artificial pancreas made of a mobile phone app that is linked to an implanted sensor and pump can monitor and control the blood sugar levels of young children with Type 1 diabetes more effectively than the current standard therapy.

Diabetes is caused by the destruction of cells in the pancreas, which normally produce the hormone insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. A lack of regulation in blood sugar can be life threatening.

Julia Ware at the University of Cambridge says that it can be difficult to treat young children with diabetes because they have less predictable eating and exercise patterns.

The standard treatment for young children with Type 1 diabetes is called sensor-augmented pump therapy, which uses a sensor to track blood sugar levels and requires caregivers to manually input how muchinsulin to release when the child is not eating.

Ware and his colleagues spent years developing an app called CamAPS FX, which links to aglucose sensor under the skin and an insulin pump that feeds into a fat layer in the abdomen, to simplify this process. The calculated amount ofinsulin should be delivered based on the measured levels. Extrainsulin doses must still be manually entered before meals.

Diabetes is restocked by swallowing magneticinsulin.

The team has compared their artificial pancreas to the standard pump therapy for children aged one to seven years. The team treated 74 children for 16 weeks.

When using the artificial pancreas, children spent around three-quarters of their day within their target blood sugar range, which is two hours more per day than the standard therapy.

When using the artificial pancreas, the children spent less than a quarter of their day with high blood sugar levels. This was less time than standard therapy. When using both treatments, the children experienced the same lowglucose levels. Ware says the benefits were even greater than expected.

The artificial pancreas was described by parents as life-changing, as it meant they were able to relax and spend less time worrying about their child's blood sugar levels, particularly at nighttime," says Ware.

Science Advances is a journal.

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