INNODIA researchers from Cambridge have developed a method to monitor what happens to the ability of type 1 diabetes patients to produce their own insulin over time, at home. They asked 32 children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes to collect a drop of blood at home on a filter paper card, also called ‘dried blood spot’, every week, in the first year from diagnosis. The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29860430), show that the method was working well and the researchers were able to track each individual’s ability to produce insulin over time. At diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, every patient still makes some insulin themselves. We know that the longer they can maintain this, the better it is for their diabetes management, frequency of low blood sugars and complications from diabetes. There is a lot of interest in novel drugs and treatment approaches that try to maintain or even restore a person’s ability to produce insulin. This home-based method can help monitor the effect of these new treatment approaches and select the patients that are likely to benefit most from them. Moreover, the method is used on a larger scale in the longitudinal present INNODIA study.
Frequent monitoring of c-peptide levels
02. July 2018