Experience Day diabetes will address last advances in "Artificial Pancreas"

Automatize patient decision making thanks to an "artificial pancreas" or increase the viability of a pancreatic islet transplant are two of the advances that will be presented in the Experience Day diabetes, which will be held in the FIRA of Barcelona next 7April.

As reported by the organizers, the fifth edition of Diabetes Experience Day will bring together more than 1,000 people among patients, family doctors, pharmaceutical representatives and researchers, in the most important annual forum of this disease that is celebrated in Spain and that in its programThe patient's vision, their challenges, needs and routines.

One of the researchers who will participate in the meeting will be the researcher at the Clínic-Ignacio CongetBetter the disease.

CONGET has advanced that "the most complex treatment for type 1 diabetes are the integrated insulin-monitoring glucose mmonitor systems, consisting of a glucose sensor and a system of continuous infusion of subcutaneous insulin (insulin pump)."

"The most modern devices are able to suspend insulin administration when hypoglycemia is predicted or when it occurs," added the expert.

But, except for these devices, it is commonly the patient who must interpret the sensor information and constant decision making regarding insulin, intake and physical activity infusion, a multitude of decisions that the diabetes patient must take eachday with greater or lesser success.

Therefore, researchers try to develop what is already known as an "artificial pancreas", a system designed to achieve automatic control of glucose figure through mathematical algorithms capable of interpreting glucose figures and their fluctuations, in additionof making decisions automatically regarding insulin infusion.

Another of the diabetes research lines that will be addressed in the meeting is the transplantation of pancreatic islets, an effective and safe clinical procedure for certain people with type 1 diabetes.

Joan Marc Servitja, researcher at CIBERDEM and the Diabetes and Obesity Laboratory at the Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS, has pointed to the "donor pancreas shortage and the need for chronic treatment with receptor immunosuppressants as two determining factors that restrict to apply thisprocedure".

For this reason, and despite the advances in the last two decades, the field of pancreatic islet transplant continues to be a research to expand the number of people who can benefit and increase the success of the long -term process.

The researcher currently works to discover the mechanisms involved in the dysfunction and inflammation of pancreatic islets to be able to design new therapeutic strategies that recover the function of the pancreatic islet and optimize their transplant.