2024-01-22 14:17:00
The dream of many people with diabetes of swapping insulin needles for chocolate bars could soon become reality. Researchers in Australia and Norway have developed insulin-enriched chocolate bars to control blood sugar. The news was published in the magazine Nature Nanotechnology.
For the treatment, scientists produced a type of sugar-free chocolate with insulin nanoparticles to replace the injections that people with diabetes need to take daily to control blood glucose levels.
At the moment, the results were promising in tests carried out with nematodes, diabetic mice and rats, as well as healthy baboons, as the insulin nanoparticles were effective without causing side effects.
Peter McCourt, professor at the University of Tromsø, explains that chocolate treatment poses fewer risks than injections:
This way of administering insulin is more precise, because it delivers the insulin directly to the liver, where it is used. Whereas when you take insulin with a syringe, it spreads throughout your body where it can cause unwanted side effects.
Furthermore, insulin is only absorbed by the body when the blood sugar level is high, which prevents cases of hypoglycemia, when blood glucose is too low, which can cause dizziness, tremors, fainting and even seizures.
There’s just one obstacle: insulin cannot be dissolved in the stomach. To avoid this problem, scientists used silver capsules like the one in the image above. McCourt says the silver particles in the capsule are so small that they are impossible to see with the naked eye and do not cause any side effects.
Testing chocolate against diabetes should begin by 2025. The expectation is that it will become a commercial product in 2 or 3 years in bar and tablet format.
Meanwhile, other stem cell studies aim to definitively cure the deficiency in the human body’s insulin production.
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