They found that it is both safe to use and more effective at managing their blood sugar levels than current technology. Management of type 1 diabetes is challenging in very young children, because of a number of factors including the high variability in levels of insulin required and in how individual children respond to treatment, and their unpredictable eating and activity patterns.
Children are particularly at risk of dangerously low blood sugar levels hypoglycaemia and high blood sugar levels hyperglycaemia. Previous studies have linked prolonged hyperglycaemia in children with type 1 diabetes with lower IQ scores and slower brain growth. These devices have proved successful to an extent in older children, but not in very young children.
Professor Roman Hovorka from the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge has developed an app β CamAPS FX β which, combined with a glucose monitor and insulin pump, acts as an artificial pancreas, automatically adjusting the amount of insulin it delivers based on predicted or real-time glucose levels.
There are no commercially-available versions of fully closed loop systems yet. It learns how much insulin the child needs per day and how this changes at different times of the day. It then uses this to adjust insulin levels to help achieve ideal blood sugar levels.
Working across seven centres in the UK and Europe, Professor Hovorka and an international team of researchers recruited 74 children with type 1 diabetes, aged one to seven years, to take part in their trial. The trial compared the safety and efficacy of hybrid closed-loop therapy with sensor-augmented pump therapy. All children used the CamAPS FX hybrid closed-loop system for 16 weeks, and then used the control treatment sensor-augmented pump therapy for 16 weeks.
