Diabetes affects more than 350 million people worldwide. In the United States alone, around 30 million people suffer from this disease. According to World Health Organization (WHO), that number is expected to continue to grow.
Patients with Type 1 diabetes try to manage their diabetes with repeated insulin shots that are very painful and imprecise.
But the painful insulin injections could be a thing of the past now, thanks to a breakthrough invention by researchers at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University. They have developed a smart insulin patch.
This smart insulin patch is covered with hundreds of micro-needles, each about the size of a human eyelash. Each painless micro-needle stores blood glucose-sensing enzymes and insulin. Once the enzyme detects any rise in blood sugar level, the tiny needle automatically delivers the required doses of insulin painlessly.
So far, the researchers have tested the patch on mice. These tests saw glucose levels come under control for more than nine hours. The researchers are highly confident that the personalized insulin patch could be made available to humans in the near future.
