Lights and shadows of insulin treatment seen by a senior diabetologist

Summary

Together with the extraordinary achievements obtained with insulin discovery and treatment various inconveniences have been observed. Even in the history of the discovery of the hormone different views and reactions brought the Toronto group to Internal fight. Insulin treatment has shown many drawbacks: overinsuliniization, sudden death after recovery of coma, undiscovered homicides, inadverted hypoglycemia, possibly some vascular and neurological complications.

But of course these drawbacks are largely overcome by the magnificient improvement of way of life of all diabetics, who now may reach a life expectancy not different from non diabetic subjects. With human insulin, immunological phenomena have practically disappeared. The future of insulin treatment will be confronted with the large amount of new diabetics, which will be very likely observed in western world, but above all in the developing countries, in a not too distant future. New ways of treatment will be certainly found with potent analogs. Perhaps something better than insulin may be discovered.

Key words

Insulin discovery - retarded insulin - immunology - hypoglycemia