At the moment, people living with type 1 diabetes have to personally inject themselves with insulin by pricking themselves with a needle. It’s a daily procedure that’s annoying, painful, and absolutely necessary to avoid medical complications. With that in mind, scientists from MIT set out to find a more painless method of administering insulin. What their years of research has led to is a blueberry-sized pill that has a tiny, biodegradable needle within it that has tip made entirely of compressed, freeze-dried insulin. The idea is that, once a person swallows this pill, the water in the stomach dissolves the sugar, which releases the insulin-covered needle tip into the wall of the stomach where it gets into the blood supply. Since the walls of the stomach don’t have pain receptors, the injection will be painless for people who take the pill.
Scientists invented an insulin pill for diabetes patients
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