Thursday, February 23, 2012

Could NASA bring the Diabetes Community the next big research breakthrough?

About a week ago, I read an article about NASA coming up with something called  a Biocapsules. These Biocapsules basically will be able to help keep astronauts potentially  healthier while they are travelling in space, by being able to diagnose and treat a variety of illnesses... while they are still in outer space!

Alternatively, they are also looking into the possibility of how this could be a huge breakthrough for the rest of us here on Earth... including those living with Diabetes, Cancer, and other medical conditions!

Here's a quote from a section of the article about how Biocapsules can potentially help hundreds of thousands of people living with diabetes...

On our home planet, the NASA Biocapsule's primary target is diabetes—specifically, patients who need insulin. Says Dr. Loftus:
The capsule would contain pancreatic islet cells (from animals) or would contain engineered cells designed to behave like pancreatic islet cells, with both glucose-sensing and insulin secretion function. Patients with low-insulin requirement might benefit from implantation of a single capsule (containing perhaps a million to 10 million cells); patients with higher insulin requirement might require implantation of more than one capsule.
In other words, diabetes patients might never need to give themselves another shot. They wouldn't have to worry about remembering to bring medicine everywhere, and they might even be free of having to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels. Plus, many diabetes patients lapse into comas or die during sleep because that's eight hours every day when they can't monitor their levels. The NASA Biocapsules would work automatically, regardless of whether you're awake or not. As of 2010 there were an estimated 285 million people living with diabetes, so saying that this invention could potentially save millions of lives is not an exaggeration.

How incredible is this?!

Read more about NASA's Biocapsules then tell me what you think about it?

Do you think it could be the "next major advancement" in Diabetes Research history?

I think it has a lot of potential... that's for sure! Hope I hear more about the advancements of this in the near future!

So, what do you think?

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