
Sugar-Breathing Glycopolymersomes for Regulating Glucose Level - uber1geek
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.7b03219
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jimrandomh
This may be a useful adjunct to insulin therapy, but there is no possibility
whatsoever that it will be a replacement for it.

Insulin is the molecule that signals to cells that it is okay to take in and
use sugar that's in the blood. This is a molecule that buffers sugar; if
there's a high sugar concentration in the blood it binds it together and if
there's a low sugar concentration it releases it. This would normally be one
of the functions of the liver, but the latter part (absorbing excess sugar for
storage) won't happen without insulin signaling. If you give this to a type 1
diabetic without also giving insulin, all that will happen is that it'll
absorb sugar until it reaches capacity; the cells that should be using sugar
for energy still won't be able to.

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templaedhel
As a type 1 diabetic I can say (personally) the difficulties of managing my
diabetes do not stem from taking insulin, that's a solved problem. Rather the
difficulties come from taking the right amount at the right time. Insulin is
slow acting (2-3 hours for it to fully take effect) so you're always trying to
predict/aim for a moving target, and one that can shift rapidly depending on
eating/exercise. If I could just set it and forget it, or even just have the
ability to be 50% less accurate when calculating/planning dosage and
activities, it would be a paradigm shift.

~~~
wavefunction
I find anecdotes help illustrate the problems people can face with health
issues that might seem minor at first glance.

My father's doctor mis-prescribed his insulin levels a few years back. His
doctor forgot about the potential interaction with another drug, which is a
very common problem unfortunately in medicine.

The end result is that I got a call from my father who sounded as if he was
experiencing a stroke, as his entire right side of his body was unresponsive
and his speech was slurred and he sounded incredibly drunk. I rushed over and
found him slumped in his living room unable to move and I carried him to my
car for a hurried car-ride to the hospital.

He got to spend that night -Christmas Eve- in the hospital for observation
until they were able to determine he was ok and that the culprit was the drug-
interaction. Something like $10k of his retirement fund gone because he had
been laid-off and his insurance wouldn't cover this sort of thing.

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1123581321
Responding to your main point: a drug mis-interaction is not really something
people consider minor, and interactions are possible in every area of
medicine, not just diabetes. While it's true that fatally low blood sugar is
more likely for a diabetic than worst case scenarios are for some other
diseases, developing a new diabetic treatment isn't riskier than developing
insulin. Everyone involved in the drug pipeline knows what hypoglycemia is and
that it can happen unpredictably.

I am concerned what might happen if the state of diabetes treatment advances
and medical staff do not become significantly more educated, though.

Responses to the anecdote:

You didn't mention giving your father sugar. For others reading: tilt the
patient so you can put things in the side of their mouth, and put in some
sugar or soda (or something else that uses sweeteners with carbs/calories and
is not fatty/fibery.)

Options for payment in this case were: negotiate discount or write-off with
hospital, if insurance non-coverage was due to out-of-network negotiate
insurance contribution as paid in full, to seek a medical malpractice
settlement. But I understand how it is hard to get these kinds of things done,
especially as a third party.

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uber1geek
Scientists create "sugar sponge" which can be injected into diabetics to sop
up and bind glucose when glucose levels are high, and release the sugar when
its concentrations are low. They also tested the sponge in mice with type-I
diabetes, and within two days, they saw antidiabetic effects.

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yjftsjthsd-h
If that works... that's a cure, isn't it? Like, sure, there's upkeep, but
automatic blood sugar regulation means 0 symptoms = functional cure.

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lolc
This could could make my diabetes much easier to manage. Though injecting
sugar balls into my bloodstream does not sound like the first thing I will
try. Testing it on mice with their short life span is bound to miss effects
that take a while to accumulate. And diabetes is all about accumulating
damage. I will wait for the fallout from long-term trials. (Haha, I have to
anyway, it's regulated for these reasons.)

But hey, wouldn't doping your blood with sugar be of interest with athletes?

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amelius
Here's a Wired story about a more controversial technique: [1].

Quoting:

> His team used genetic tweaks to prevent rats from making their own
> pancreases. Then they injected mouse stem cells (complete with all the
> necessary pancreas-making genes) into the developing pancreas-less rat
> embryos. The rats grew normally. The only thing different was their
> pancreases were made almost entirely of mouse cells.

> Then they went a step further. From those rat-mouse chimeras, Nakauchi’s
> team took out tiny clusters of pancreatic cells that make insulin (called
> islets) and transplanted them into diabetic mice. The islets settled in and
> made enough insulin to keep the host mice’s blood glucose levels in a normal
> range for more than a year. In layman’s terms? The mice were cured.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2017/01/first-human-pig-chimera-
step-t...](https://www.wired.com/2017/01/first-human-pig-chimera-step-toward-
custom-organs/)

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Darvict
Woah. This is actually potentially massive. Sugar is an epidemic.

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lolc
I guess because it would be buffering sugar intake it would allow the body to
keep insulin levels lower. That would help ward off type 2 Diabetes.

You'd still be consuming too much sugar but the body could handle it better.

