Diabetes type 1 Treatment Management

For diabetes type 1, the usual treatment is with insulin replacement therapy—usually by insulin injection or insulin pump, along with attention to dietary management, typically including carbohydrate tracking, and careful monitoring of blood glucose levels using glucose meters.

The most common insulins that use to treat diabetes type 1 nowadays are biosynthetic products produced using genetic recombination techniques; formerly, cattle or pig insulins were used, and even sometimes insulin from fish. A more recent trend of diabetes type 1 treatment, from several suppliers, is insulin analogs which are slightly modified insulins which have different onset of action times or duration of action times.

If diabetes type 1 left untreated, it is commonly leads to coma, often from diabetic ketoacidosis, which is very dangerous if untreated and can lead to death. Continuous glucose monitors have been developed and marketed which can alert diabetes patients to the presence of dangerously high or low blood sugar levels, but technical limitations have limited the impact these devices have had on clinical practice so far.

In worst diabetes cases, a pancreas transplant can restore proper glucose regulation. However, the surgery and accompanying immunosuppression required is considered by many physicians to be more dangerous than continued insulin replacement therapy, and is therefore often used only as a last resort in treating diabetes (such as when a kidney must also be transplanted, or in cases where the patient's blood glucose levels are extremely volatile). Experimental replacement of beta cells (by transplant or from stem cells) is being investigated in several research programs. Thus far, beta cell replacement has only been performed on diabetes patients over age 18, and with tantalizing successes amidst nearly universal failure.

Diabetes type 1 treatment by transplantation surgery: