Insulin dose through the nose - the end of injections for diabetics?

Scientists have developed a once-a-day nasal gel formulation for the delivery of insulin that could put an end to injections for Type 1 diabetes sufferers. In results published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Biomaterials Science, researchers show that the insulin-loaded gel reduces blood glucose levels over 24 hours in a diabetic-rat model when administered via the nose. Tests using mucus-producing cells to model conditions in the nose showed that eight times as much insulin was taken up by the cells when incubated with the insulin-loaded gel formulation, compared with a simple solution of insulin in water. Scientists performed further tests on the gel formulation using diabetic-rat models. Their results showed that the rats' blood glucose levels fell following nasal administration of the insulin-loaded gel and then took around 24 hours to return to their original values. By comparison, they found that it took only nine hours for blood glucose levels to return to their original values in control models treated with insulin by the normal route of subcutaneous injection