Artificial pancreas hope for diabetics "by 2018"

The researchers, part of an ‘artificial pancreas consortium’ at the university, have made progress on integrating an insulin pump mechanism with a continuous blood-glucose monitoring system, a feat which has so far seemed to be an insurmountable problem.

An artificial pancreas would make life significantly easier for people suffering from type-1 diabetes, the variant of the disease where the body produces no insulin of its own.

Currently, sufferers have to test the level of glucose in their blood several times per day by pricking a finger and feeding a drop of blood into a hand-held meter; they must then calculate how much insulin they need to inject based on what they have been eating, how active they expect to be and several other factors. This means that their insulin requirements can vary widely: one day they might get through three times their average dosage, the next day only a third of it. Getting the dosage wrong risks hypo- or hyperglycaemia (too little or too much sugar), both of which cause cumulative damage to nerves and blood vessels.