Promise of once-a-month jabs for diabetics

DIABETICS could in future be able to have monthly injections instead of enduring daily jabs to stay healthy.

Scientists have developed a solution which turns to jelly in the body, steadily releasing insulin as it dissolves to provide weeks of glucose control.

Currently about a million Britons with advanced type 2 diabetes have to inject themselves up to three times a day to con- trol their blood sugar levels. Study co-author Kelli Luginbuhl, a PhD student, said the new ‘biopolymer’ injection lasted more than two weeks in primates.

As our metabolism is slower, it should last longer in humans. Many treatments use the chemical GLP1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) which researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, successfully fused with a protein called ELP.

Previous studies coupled GLP1 with synthetic antibodies but this did not control the rate of its release.

The new jab would not work on patients with type 1 diabetes as they cannot produce insulin, it was reported in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.