While people with type 2 diabetes that is discovered relatively early may be able to hold off the need for insulin shots for a long time, or with proper lifestyle forever, people with type 1 diabetes symptoms generally must begin injections immediately. Some would call these shots a type 1 diabetic’s life preserver. But how much do you know about the history of insulin?
For many people with type 1 diabetes symptoms, the major drawback of taking insulin is the use of needles. While many different inventions have been made to change the way a diabetic’s insulin needle works, it is essentially still a prickly needle that they have to poke themselves with a couple times a day every day forever.
Up until about 30 years ago, the shots used to treat diabetics was obtained directly from an animal’s pancreas. How would you like a dose of pig insulin or cow insulin? This was effective, but not a complete match or replacement for human needs. It was not uncommon for diabetic patients to have extreme immune responses to this insulin because purification processes couldn’t remove every trace impurity. It wasn’t until the 1970s that researchers in a laboratory were able to get bacteria to produce human insulin. About 99% of the those used for diabetics now is human insulin.
Insulin used to come in two strength densities. These were referred to as U40 and U80. These numbers respectively represent 40 units of insulin per milliliter and 80 units of insulin per milliliter. Additionally, there were different syringes that had to be used with each of the different strength densities. Because many patients became confused and suffered serious consequences, the United States adopted a law that standardized strength densities at U100, or 100 units of insulin per milliliter. This has made it easier for doctors to write prescriptions patients will be able to understand and implement. It has also made it so there is just one syringe size so that confusion is avoided on syringes as well.
Tags: Diabetes, Diabetes Disease, diabetes pills, Diabetes Symptoms, Disease, human insulin, insulin, medicines, pills, Symptoms
