‘Nano’ insulin may relieve diabetics of daily shots
Good news for patients
who have to take insulin injections regularly — up to three times a day in a
few cases.
The National Institute
of Immunology (NII), a wing of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR),
has developed a nano form of insulin, which replaces the daily injection and
needs to be taken only once in two weeks.
The product, developed
by Dr Avdesh Surolia, former director of NII, has been sent to a US-based firm
for clinical (human) trials.
Surolia said, “If the
clinical trial goes as per our plan, it will be a great relief for diabetic
patients who have to take the insulin injection every day. We hope the product
will be launched within a year.”
Presently, diabetics
who need injections three times a day also face the risk of their sugar levels
dipping to dangerously low levels.
The new insulin
preparation follows a simple method in which the hormone is stacked together
into complexes called oligomers. It is released into the body at low doses and
at regular intervals, so that the body does not feel the plummet.
“We have completed
experiments on rats. The advantage of the oligomer method is that it gets
individual molecules of insulin to come together and form multi-molecular or
supra-molecular assemblies,” Surolia explained.
Dr Surolia was in Kochi
to deliver a special presentation at Nanobio 2012, organised by the Amrita
Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine.
However, experts are
sceptical about the product.
Senior diabetologist Dr
Shashank Joshi, president, Indian Academy of Diabetics, said, “This product is
still in the concept stage, and it is very premature to comment on it. We have
to wait till the clinical trial is over to see the result.”
He added, “The US Food
and Drug Administration has approved a similar product which is available in
European countries. An insulin-dependent patient can take one shot of this
product and then need not take insulin for a week.”
29.02.2012
India gets WHO seal on victory over polio
In a major boost to the
country’s fight against a dreaded disease that cripples many lives, the World
Health Organisation (WHO) has taken off India’s name from the list of polio
endemic countries.
This has been done in
view of the remarkable progress that India had made by being polio free for the
past one year. Not a single polio case has been reported in the country since
January 13, 2011 when the last case was found in Howrah (West Bengal).
This is a major
milestone in the history of polio eradication and a major achievement for India
immunization programme as the number of polio cases has come down from 1,50,000
in 1985. In 2009 the country had reported 741 polio cases, more than any other
country in the world. But in 2010, there were just 42 cases out of the 1,352
reported across the world.
With India achieving
zero-transmission status, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three
countries remaining with wild polio virus in the world.
The WHO had informed
the government about this on Friday which Union minister for health and family
welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad divulged in the presence of prime minister Manmohan
Singh at the inauguration of a polio summit in New Delhi. However, India still
has to wait for two more years to get a certificate of complete eradication of
the virus and that will come only if no fresh cases are reported by 2014.
“The battle has been
won but the war against Polio is not yet over. There is going to be zero
tolerance for any new polio case and such a case will be declared as a public
health emergency,” Azad said.
According to Azad, 27%
of the global expenditure on polio eradication has come from India’s domestic
resources. “More than 99% coverage of children in the two remaining endemic
states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is unprecedented,” Azad said and added that
the aggressive mop up response against polio has enabled to stop further transmission
of the virus.
“This gives us hope
that we can finally eradicate polio not only from India but from the face of
the earth,” the PM said. He also emphasized on the need for nutritious food,
safe drinking water, proper sanitation and education in addition to universal
access to safe vaccines. He said that we need to accelerate our efforts to
achieve goal of providing universal access to health care at affordable cost
for citizens. Education and health will be the key priorities of the Twelfth Five
Year Plan, he emphasized.
29.02.2012
Difficulties
increase the nearer we get to the goal
Goethe
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