ParfumGigi@aol.com
Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:49:20 EDT
Inhaled insulin provides diabetics with an alternative to injections
Web Posted: 10/19/2006 05:35 PM CDT
Wendy Rigby
KENS 5 Eyewitness News
Some South Texas diabetics are embracing a new kind of insulin delivery system to help manage their disease. It doesn't involve needles, and patients say it's making their lives a lot easier.
William Sickler has coped with type one diabetes for the last 28 years. The disease left him blind in 1997, but this year, he's been able to change his routine of five shots of insulin a day.
"I've been waiting for something like this, an alternative to shots for some time," Sickler said.
The alternative is an inhaled insulin device called Exubera, made by Pfizer and approved by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this year. A small blister pack of fine-powder insulin is inserted into the tube.
The patient inhales it deeply into the lungs three times a day before meals.
"It took a long time to develop this. It has to be in a particle size that'll deliver it to the part of the lung that will allow absorption," said Dr. Mark Kipnes, an endocrinologist at the Diabetes & Glandular Disease Clinic.
Patients have to take a pulmonary function test to make sure they can take the drug this way, and those who smoke or have asthma or lung disease may not qualify. However, for those patients who are fearful or tired of injections like Sickler, it's a great invention.
"I've been using it about a month and it's been working wonderfully. My blood sugars are far better than they have been in the past. I just feel better," Sickler said.
Kipnes, who has been helping to test inhaled insulin with his patients for many years, says it's a positive breakthrough in diabetes control.
"It's a nice alternative, and some patients are much more reluctant to take injections. Some patients will never consider an injection, in spite of our urging. And they'll allow this as an alternative," he said.
Several other drug companies have version of inhaled insulin that will come on the market soon.
For more information about Exubera and on-going studies involving inhaled insulin, contact the Diabetes & Glandular Disease Clinic in San Antonio at (210) 615-5555.
