Lots of Business Partnerships … see if you can follow all the collaborations!

Abbott, Sanofi to interconnect their diabetes monitoring, insulin delivery tech was reported by Conor Hale for FierceBiotech.com, 16 September 2019.  A new collaboration will begin with gathering user consent to connect Abbott’s wearable FreeStyle Libre wearable sensor with Sanofi’s connected insulin pens and software currently under development.

Two of the world’s largest companies in the diabetes space, Abbott and Sanofi, are partnering up to develop tools that integrate their respective blood sugar tracking and insulin delivery technologies. The end goal is to create a “connected device experience” for people managing their diabetes, according to the two companies, through new smart insulin pens, smartphone apps for titration and cloud-based software analytics.

The nonexclusive collaboration will aim to combine Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitoring system with Sanofi’s background in insulin dosing, into new, compatible devices being developed for regulatory approval within the coming years.

Read more: Abbott, Sanofi to interconnect their diabetes monitoring, insulin delivery tech

With new Medtronic pact, Novo Nordisk’s smart insulin pen to link with all major CGMs was also written by Conor Hale for FierceBiotech.com, 16 September 2019. 

Medtronic and Novo Nordisk have agreed to integrate their digital offerings for people with diabetes, including the sharing of data between continuous glucose monitoring devices and smart insulin pens.  The collaboration is similar to a contemporaneously announced move from the two companies’ competitors: a nonexclusive agreement between the devicemaker Abbott and insulin manufacturer Sanofi. 

But for Novo Nordisk, the agreement with Medtronic and its predictive Guardian Connect system completes its set of major producers of continuous blood sugar monitors—as it continues to develop its connected insulin pen, the Danish company has lined up data compatibility agreements with Abbott, Glooko and others.

Read more:  Novo Nordisk’s smart insulin pen to link with all major CGMs

Bayer steps up to take One Drop’s tech beyond diabetes, backs $40M round was published by Amirah Al Idrus for FierceBiotech.com, 17 September 2019. 

One Drop, the digital health specialist that markets diabetes management tools, has found a new partner and investor in Bayer. The German pharma led One Drop’s $40 million series B round and licensed its technology for its “bio-digital efforts” in areas beyond diabetes. 

New York-based One Drop offers hardware and software to help people manage their diabetes, including a Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose meter, test strips and lancets as well as a mobile app and various coaching programs. These are available individually or as part of a “gestational diabetes package” or a subscription-based “diabetes package.” 

The One Drop app works with FitBit trackers and Dexcom glucose monitoring systems on iPhone and Android devices. Apple has even begun selling One Drop’s chrome-plated glucose meter alongside its iPhones and Apple Watches in some of its U.S. retail stores. These integrations, One Drop says, are why its reach is so deep. It estimates that nearly 1.5 million people in 195 countries use its technology.

Read more: Bayer steps up to take One Drop’s tech beyond diabetes

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Why Do People with Type 1 Diabetes Develop Insulin Resistance? was written by Ross Wollen for ASweetLife.org, 9 September 2019. 

It has already been established that people with Type 1 diabetes tend to exhibit much higher levels of insulin resistance than expected from typical risk factors (such as age, body fat percentage, blood pressure, exercise rate, etc). There is something about Type 1 diabetes itself, or the way that it is treated, that itself causes insulin resistance independent of all of the usual factors that the general population is asked to look out for.

A recent study published by the American Diabetes Association represents an attempt to understand why this occurs. The authors isolated two proposed contributors to the phenomenon: hyperglycemia and iatrogenic hyperinsulinemia.

Hyperglycemia should be familiar to us all: high blood sugars. What is iatrogenic hyperinsulinemia? “Hyperinsulinemia” is the condition of having too much insulin circulating throughout the blood. “Iatrogenic” refers to an illness that is caused by medical treatment. Iatrogenic hyperinsulinemia is when a patient has an excess of insulin due to a medical regimen, in this case, routine and necessary injections of exogenous insulin.

In short: injecting insulin makes your tissues insulin resistant.

Read more:  Why Do People with Type 1 Diabetes Develop Insulin Resistance?

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Could this mechanism explain why sleepless nights affect gut health? was published by Catharine Paddock for MedicalNewsToday.com, 19 September 2019. 

Gut inflammation and other conditions that involve the immune system are more common among people with irregular sleep patterns. Now, new research in mice has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that could help to explain the connection. New research finds a body clock mechanism that may explain the link between sleep patterns and gut health.

The mechanism concerns group 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3s). These immune cells have a strong role in controlling metabolism, inflammation, and other biological processes.  In a recent Nature paper, the scientists explain how they used mice to better understand the role of ILC3s in the gut.  “These cells,” says senior study author Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, Ph.D., “fulfill important functions in the gut — they fight infection, control the integrity of the gut epithelium, and instruct lipid absorption.”

Read More:  Could this mechanism explain why sleepless nights affect gut health?

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CGM, Not Insulin Pump, ‘Is What Makes Difference’ in Type 1 Diabetes was reported by Miriam E. Tucker for MedScape.com, 18 September 2019. 

Use of real-time continuous glucose monitoring (rtCGM) can help improve blood glucose control in people with type 1 diabetes whether they use an insulin pump or multiple daily injections (MDI) of insulin, new research suggests. Three-year data from the Comparison of Different Treatment Modalities for Type 1 Diabetes Including Sensor-Augmented Insulin Regimens (COMISAIR) study were presented here at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2019 Annual Meeting by Jan Šoupal, MD, PhD, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.  The results were simultaneously published in Diabetes Care.

At 3 years — the longest duration of any CGM trial — real-time (not flash) CGM was superior to self-monitored blood glucose (SMBG), or fingerstick, testing at least four times daily in reducing HbA_1c in patients using both pumps and MDI, with little difference between the two insulin delivery modalities.

Only the rtCGM group had improvements in time-in-range and reduced time below range. Fewer patients using rtCGM experienced severe hypoglycemic episodes. “It is not so important how insulin is delivered, but more important is how patients with type 1 diabetes monitor their glucose,” Šoupal said during his presentation.

Read more:  CGM, Not Insulin Pump, ‘Is What Makes Difference’ in Type 1 Diabetes

Heart Calcium CT Scans: The Slow Crawl to Widespread Use While the “Walking Dead” Suffer was reported by Joel Kahn for Medium/Health, 13 September 2019.

“After 30 years of cardiology practice, with an interest in the prevention of heart attacks and heart deaths, I think my medical community is doing a poor job. The concept that heart disease, specifically clogged heart arteries called coronary artery disease (CAD), has a long period without symptoms and warnings is well known. There is often a sudden change culminating in an emergency, heart attack, or death.”

While there are screening prostate exams, colon exams, and breast exams, where in 2019 is the heart “mammogram” for individuals without symptoms? The “walking dead”, those with dangerous but silent CAD, are getting ignored in a busy medical system even though there is such an examination that is inexpensive, simple, and widely available.

The heart calcium CT scan, also known as the coronary artery calcium scan or CACS, is a radiologic procedure that is painless, takes under 1 minute, involves no needles or injections, and exposes a patient to about the same dose of radiation that a mammogram does (1 mSv). In most areas, the CACS costs around $100. The prognostic power of the CACS examination has been established for over a decade and has been confirmed in recent studies.

You can share the references in this article with your health care provider and ask for a Rx to go to your local hospital for the CACS exam.

Read more:  Heart Calcium CT Scans: The Slow Crawl to Widespread Use While the “Walking Dead” Suffer

How People with Diabetes in Developing Countries Cool Their Insulin was reported by James Dinneen for Medium/Elemental, 18 September 2019. 

Insulin is a protein and to maintain its potency, it must be kept at or below standard room temperature (20–25 C/68–77 F). If it gets too hot, it denatures, like egg-white in hot water, and becomes less effective. In regions where the temperature is regularly hotter than 25 C/77 F and where people live without refrigeration, this is a problem.

In Sierra Leone, a medical team visited a T1 at his home … and behind his house was a shallow hole covered with a piece of wood. At the bottom of the hole was a small clay pot and inside was the insulin, cool and vulnerable.

Besides clay pots, the researchers looked at a gourd from Sudan, a goatskin filled with water from Mali, a bucket filled with wet sand from Ethiopia, and, as a control, a FRIO cooling wallet manufactured in the UK.

Read more:  How People with Diabetes in Developing Countries Cool Their Insulin