YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 19, ARMENPRESS. An insulin pill being developed by researchers at UC Santa Barbara may in the near future give another blood sugar management option to those who suffer from diabetes. The novel drug delivery technology may also apply to a wide spectrum of other therapies. “Armenpress” reports the aforementioned referring to Medical press.

According to the Centers for Disease Control's 2014 estimates, more than 29 million individuals in the U.S. have undiagnosed or diagnosed diabetes. Many of these people would require regular insulin shots. For those who don't like needles, the discomfort injections can pose is a huge barrier to compliance, said Amrita Banerjee, a postdoctoral researcher in the Mitragotri Lab. "It can lead to mismanagement of treatment and complications that lead to hospitalization," she said.

A pill, said the researchers, could circumvent the discomfort associated with the needle while potentially providing a more effective dose.

"When you deliver insulin by injection, it goes first through the peripheral bloodstream and then to blood circulation in the liver," Mitragotri explained. Oral delivery would take a more direct route, he added, and, from a physiological point of view, a better one.

"This is the first essential step in showing that these patches can deliver insulin," Mitragotri said. Like any other novel therapy, however, it must undergo additional stages of testing and improvement before it can be considered as a viable treatment for diabetes. Results of this research were presented in October at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' annual meeting and exposition in Orlando, Florida.