Excess sugar, or glucose, in your blood is not good. But a healthy body regulates it through insulin, produced in the organ called the pancreas.
If the body fails to do that, either because of genetics or an unhealthy lifestyle, diabetics have to adopt a grueling routine of constant monitoring of blood sugar and injecting insulin for the rest of their lives.
Both insulin monitors and delivery devices, called insulin pumps, are available, but so far, creating an automatic injector that does not require monitoring has proved to be a difficult problem.
After working on it for almost 20 years, scientists at Harvard University say they may be close to solving it.
“In essence, we use a patient model, a computational model, a mathematical model, to forecast into the future," said Harvard's Frank Doyle, a professor of engineering and applied sciences. "So we get a sense of how past insulin affects future glucose, how the past trajectory of glucose is going to play out for the next hour or two.”
Scientists say automatic insulin pumps should be on the market within five years.
What about a cure?
Finding a cure for diabetes would be even better, and laboratory mice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may hold the key.
In the type of diabetes caused by genetic disposition, the human immune system kills pancreas cells that produce insulin. A gelatin-like substance engineered in an MIT lab shields those cells from the attack.
“We can take these human islets from stem cells and actually cure these diabetic mice for months," said Daniel Anderson, a professor of applied biology at MIT. "We have also shown that in primates we can put these little balls of new material in the abdominal space of primates and see that they don't form scar tissue, which is an important step towards thinking of using them in people.”
Scientists are optimistic that one way or another, or maybe with a combination of approaches, they will bring relief to diabetes sufferers within a few years.
Vocabulay
glucose: 葡萄糖
insulin pump: 胰岛素泵
2014英语六级考试必备词汇:短语
英语六级核心词汇记忆 J
2014年英语六级考试最后冲刺必备词汇(2)
大学英语六级考试必备常用词组(20)
英语六级考试词汇:经典英文电影台词
英语六级常见搭配词组总结
英语六级核心词汇记忆:E
英语六级核心词汇记忆:K
英语六级词汇之看对话记单词(1)
英语六级考试必备:重点词语(1)
2014英语六级考试必备词汇:动词
英语六级考试必备:重点词语(5)
英语六级考试冲刺必备短语集锦
英语六级考试听力常考词汇(6)
英语六级核心词汇记忆:B
英语六级考试必备:重点词语(4)
英语六级完形填空务必掌握的重要表达
2014年英语六级考试最后冲刺必备词汇(4)
英语六级考试高频词组:make相关搭配
英语六级核心词汇记忆:G
英语六级阅读必备词汇
英语六级词汇之看对话记单词(2)
英语六级核心词汇记忆:I
英语六级听力考试必背的词汇
2014英语六级考试必备词汇:名词
2014年12月英语六级冲刺必备词汇
英语六级核心词汇记忆:P
英语六级考试词汇精选
大学英语六级考试必备常用词组(5)
2014年12月英语六级考试冲刺必备短语
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |