Diabetes Treatment May Deliver Insulin Through a Skin Cream

sciencealert.com

13 points·gmays··5 comments

Interesting… though seems to be limited to basal insulin doses. The basal/bolus paradigm using pens or pump (both injections) can’t really go away without a ‘smart’ insulin that stays in the bloodstream, inactive, and only reacts to changing glucose levels.

Yeah could be useful for basal delivery. But I wonder how variable it will be. Temperature, moisture, rub-off, other lotions, could all hinder the delivery. Don't want additional variability on a medication this sensitive to dosage.

The biggest danger I see that it's a deadly cream. Untrained people are unlikely to inject insulin by mistake. With a cream, they might just rub some on.

Honestly hadn’t even thought of that - easy to say “more is better, right?” or miscalculate what the dose should be.

but what about for meal times? we'd have to apply lotion again?

Yea, I think this is a bit half-baked. Either the journalist doesn’t know how diabetes is treated with insulin therapy, or it’s meant for people with T2D who are only on a basal dose (unsure how common that is).

There are ‘classic’ insulins like intermediate/regular that act over longer duration and are meant to be taken once a few times a day. Though they’ve generally been phased out with the rapid+long acting approach because that matches insulin needs of the body better.

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