Recent Comments:
The Diabetes Blog retired
The Diabetes Blog
Sep 18th 2007 9:13AM I agree it was not the wisest decision. If AOL wants to attract targeted advertising dollars, you aren't going to do that via the AOL Instant Messenger service. But I cannot change your decision, but I will go on the record as saying I don't think this will be remembered as the best business decision AOL has ever made.
Luckily, I have little doubt that the bloggers here are likely to find a suitable venue for their talents!
The evolution of GM insulin 1983 - present
The Diabetes Blog
Sep 5th 2007 9:27AM I agree with Melody 100%, and even more troubling, I think the jury is still out on insulin analogs. The fact is that analogs were approved and introduced with no long-term (e.g. 10 years or more) studies to validate their efficacy, and the long-term effects of these drugs is now being tested in patients who use these non-insulin analogs. Something tells me that contrary to what big pharma may claim, man cannot outsmart nature and that by using these insulin analogs, patients may be inducing long-term problems they may not anticipate, such as various malignant cancer/melanomas or other issues. While rDNA insulin has its own problems, the issues with analogs is that man believes they have outsmarted nature, but history begs to differ!
Reporting drug side effects - One click away!
The Diabetes Blog
Sep 5th 2007 9:18AM This is definitely a step in the right direction, although it is unclear whether the FDA will give the same weight to voluntarily patient adverse reactions filed as they do to filings from doctors. We should require EMT's to file these reports, since the ambulance crews are typically the ones who deal with the adverse effects first-hand. But patients should not hesitate to file these reports; they get classified by drug so the agency can count the number of reports for each drug, and that could go a long way towards forcing the pharmaceutical industry to address these problems, or else open the doors to a competitor who will address the issue.
Lobbying the feds don't come cheap
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 31st 2007 8:28PM You ask an excellent question: just what issues were the AADE lobbying for and against? Truthfully, I suspect that a fair amount is undoubtedly to fight the "Access to Life-Saving Medicine Act of 2007" (S. 623/H.R. 1038), a bill now in Congress legislation which would open the doors to generic competition in biopharmaceuticals (although truth be told, generic insulin is already permitted today because its grandfathered as a small-molecule drug under the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act but because the FDA has not outlined procedures for generic manufacturers to obtain approvals, none have yet emerged). BIO, another organization funded almost exclusively by the drug industry, is lobbying hard against the bill to make generic manufacturers have to go through full-scale clinical trials, even while they do not have to undergo them in order to change their own manufacturing process.
I suspect the other agenda items include increased funding for diabetes treatment and prevention, but the Federal government funds relatively little of either, largely funding basic research instead.
Islet transplants like low-cal
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 30th 2007 7:38AM While fat may indeed surround the transplanted beta cells, readers no doubt interpret these results as a sign that patients should consume less fat in their diets. However, I had the luxury of speaking to Dr. Camillo Ricordi last year, and he told me that the doctors at the Diabetes Research Institute suspected a different culprit: the transplant location in the liver.
The fact is that there is nothing natural about having islets locate themselves in the liver, but it was an easy place to transplant them since they could be done (on an outpatient basis, no less) via a simple infusion via the portal vein rather than via surgery. But the evidence seems to be mounting that researchers will need to find a different transplant location for islets, as the liver may have a readily accessible location for blood, but is not necessarily the dream home location for islets!
CNN coverage of diabulemia is bananas!
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 29th 2007 8:04AM CNN is more interested in attracting advertisers than being an unbiased news source. Its popular to depict diabetes as a lifestyle disease related obesity, rather than a serious condition that has origins related to the body's nervous and immune systems. I also question the Diabetes Spectrum article upon which CNN bases its story, as the sample size is far too small to draw any conclusions from.
Novo says C-peptide is not their target
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 23rd 2007 12:21PM I have asked Creative Peptides for an interview, and did receive a response from John Wahren, the company's chief scientific officer. Presently, its a matter of determining a time when we can speak. Given the thin drug pipelines most of big pharma has these days, I suspect that they will have little problems finding a partner. Meanwhile, as Diane recently reported, Novo's new "baby" is Liraglutide to treat type 2, oh, and less we forget, another long-acting insulin analog that supposedly does not cause weight-gain. But relax, Lilly will sell you drugs for retinopathy and nerve damage, so big pharma has it all under control!
Diabetic driver "drunk on sugar," says crash victim's mom
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 22nd 2007 12:04PM Thankfully, sound minds prevailed in dismissing this case. Trying to find a criminal element where one does not exist (high blood glucose may be bad for the driver's health, but there is little if any evidence that it impairs a person's ability to drive an automobile) is never justified. Using the sympathy as a grieving parent doesn't justify it, either.
Sympathy absent in diabetes death
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 16th 2007 9:15AM The reality is that society believes, and people with diabetes do little to change the perception, that diabetes is a self-inflicted condition. At the same time, we question why there is no societal imperative to eradicate this disease. The reason comes down to perceptions, and by allowing our disease to be viewed as "manageable" and "treatable" we have also implicated ourselves. As Deb Butterfield (author of "Showdown With Diabetes") once wrote:
"By showing the world only the happy face, and not the tragic disease beneath, we are endorsing the prevailing philosophy of tolerating, rather than curing, diabetes. For policy makers, philanthropists, employers, and the public to feel compelled to cure diabetes they need to understand that diabetes is: costly for society and that those costs are rising, pervasive and the incidence is accelerating, soul-destroying and there is still no cure, and, above all, that diabetes is curable.
In order for this disease to be cured, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way diabetes is viewed. We need to close the gap between the perception of diabetes as a controllable condition and the reality that it is one of the world's oldest, deadliest, and most pervasive diseases."
Weight gain reduces severity of heart disease in type 1 diabetes
The Diabetes Blog
Aug 7th 2007 4:49PM The issue seems to be that the cause of heart disease is different in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Last year, researchers at the University of California Davis Health Center in Sacramento showed evidence that cardiovascular disease in type 1 diabetes was actually caused by autoimmunity, a decidedly different form of inflammation associated with type 2 diabetes. All of this suggests that its about time a separate cardiovascular disease risk model is developed for type 1 diabetes, as there's only one for type 2 and the nondiabetic population, not type 1 specifically.
