For women with type 1 diabetes, the stakes are never higher than during pregnancy.
New insulin delivery technology, used in an international study co-led by University of Calgary researchers, has eased diabetes-related stress for mothers like Victoria Lepp.
“It’s pretty life-changing, that’s for sure,” she said.
“I started out with syringes and pen tips and having to inject myself each meal and at bedtime, and it’s every three days now. It keeps my blood sugars in a safe range that I set, and I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
The technology, known as automated insulin delivery (AID), mimics a healthy pancreas. The system automatically adjusts the amount of insulin given by a pump in real-time, based on current and predicted glucose levels, according to a UCalgary-issued press release.
Each pump contains three days worth of insulin and adjusts to the body’s needs in real time. Users must input the number of carbohydrates they’ve eaten and let the pump do the rest, Lepp said.
“I just put that in there, and it just calculates how much insulin to get for what I eat, that’s basically it,” she said.
According to Dr. Lois Donovan, Cumming School of Medicine endocrinologist and the study’s co-principal investigator, continuous glucose monitoring is a key element of the automated insulin delivery system.
“That (glucose monitoring) information feeds into the insulin pump, where an algorithm uses that information to adjust the amount of insulin that’s delivered,” she said.
With other delivery systems, the calculations and insulin delivery were all up to the individual.
“People would have to consider, ‘Oh, how stressed am I? What’s happening to my blood sugar? I guess I’d better adjust my insulin dose,’ whereas this system is taking away some of that burden and doing the adjustment in the background,” Donovan said.
For expectant mothers, the longer their blood sugars are in a safe range, the lower the chance of issues like excessively large babies, babies that have low blood sugar, mothers that have high blood pressure, and a complication of pregnancy, called preeclampsia.
“When we use an automated insulin delivery device, not only to help women achieve better blood sugar control, but also to decrease the burden they have to put into self-management on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour basis,” she said.
AID proving to be risk-free: Researchers
In general, Donovan said the AID system was found to be very safe during pregnancy, with no unexpected safety concerns.
The University of Calgary aside, researchers were really pleased to see that all study sites showed improvement in blood sugar control.
“Regardless of the centre, whether it was a big centre or small centre, whether it was in Canada or Australia, no matter which part of the country it was in, all sites showed benefits,” Donovan said.
For Lepp, her main concern was learning the system and buttons before using AID, but everything was pretty understandable.
“I was not really anxious at all, like it was kind of nice that I don’t have to worry about testing, like poking my finger every two hours.”
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