'Pancreas on the hip' will make births safer for diabetic mothers

Published on Sunday 30 January 2011 17:42

SCIENTISTS have developed an "artificial pancreas" to cut dramatically the risks for pregnant women with diabetes.

The device, which is worn on the side of the body, helps to keep blood sugar levels under control and prevent the potentially fatal complications that can affect women with insulin-dependent diabetes during their pregnancy.

The discovery was welcomed by health campaigners and patients, many of whom take great risks in deciding to have a baby, knowing the problems their diabetes could cause.

Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease which stops the pancreas producing insulin, meaning that patients have to take regular doses of the hormone to control their sugar levels.

The babies of women with the condition have a fivefold increased risk of being stillborn and are three times more likely than average to die in their first months of life.

These babies also have double the normal risk of a major deformity, while low blood glucose is a leading cause of death among pregnant mothers.

In a effort to address this problem, researchers at Cambridge University wanted to create a device that would act as a pancreas during a pregnancy, when controlling their condition is even more vital.

The artificial pancreas that they came up with is a mobile phone-sized device which is worn on the hip.

The device consists of a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), to measure blood sugar levels, and an insulin pump.

The device automatically monitors blood glucose and pumps insulin into the circulation to help maintain the correct sugar levels.

Previous studies have shown that such a system could help children with type 1 diabetes, but until now it had not been tested successfully on pregnant women.

Helen Murphy, from Cambridge University, who led the study, which is published in journal Diabetes Care, said: "For women with type 1 diabetes, self-management is particularly challenging during pregnancy, due to physiological and hormonal changes.

"Previous studies indicate that pregnant women with the condition spend an average of ten hours a day with glucose levels outside the recommended target."

• Case study: 'I'd like a normal birth, but it might not be an option'

Dr Murphy said that high blood glucose levels increased the risk of congenital abnormalities, stillbirth, neonatal death, premature birth and macrosomia, which leads to oversized babies.

"So to discover an artificial pancreas can help to maintain near-normal glucose levels in these women is very promising," she added.

Iain Frame, the director of research at Diabetes UK, welcomed the findings.

"Although early days, this exciting area of research, funded by our donors, has huge potential to make pregnancy much safer for women with Type 1 diabetes, and their babies," Mr Frame said.

"It's a fantastic example of how existing technologies - in this case, insulin pumps and CGMs - can be adapted and developed to benefit as many people with diabetes as possible."We now need to see an extension of this study, one which tests larger numbers of women, and then take it out of the hospital and into the home setting."

Two out of every three mothers who suffered from diabetes before they became pregnant have the type 1 disease, which affects about 300,000 people in the UK.

Some 27,000 people in Scotland are thought to suffer from Type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the condition, is linked to obesity and tends to affect older people past their reproductive age.