
Hybrid closed-loop insulin delivery systems for type 1 diabetes come of age
At 19 months old, Jamie Kurtzig was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. For the next 10 years, her parents would wake up every three hours during the night to prick their daughter's finger so they could check her blood glucose level. If her blood glucose was too low, they gave her food to avoid seizures or a loss of consciousness. If it was too high, they gave her an insulin injection to bring the level down to a normal range.
"It's caused a kind of PTSD for my husband and me," said Sara Kurtzig, who lives with her daughter and husband in Marin, California.
But for the past year, they've been able to sleep through most nights. That's because Jamie started using a hybrid closed-loop insulin delivery system in 2016, thanks to a clinical trial at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine that assessed the system's use in children ages 7 to 14.
"The closed-loop system has completely changed our lives," Sara said. "It took me a month to trust it, but now I can go to bed at 11 p.m. and wake up at 6:30 a.m. almost every night."
The system is among the methods being tested by researchers at the School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in their efforts to find easier ways for younger children with type 1 diabetes to get the doses of insulin they need.
Bruce Buckingham, MD, professor of pediatric endocrinology, directs clinical trials of the closed-loop system, which modulates insulin delivery based on glucose sensor readings measured every five minutes. He called the system a "historic advance" for diabetes care.
"With this system, patients can a
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