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Abstract: Diabetes is recognized as a serious
illness throughout the world. The insufficient or nil
production of insulin is the main cause of diabetes
mellitus. For the past 80 years subcutaneous injections
have been the only route to deliver insulin in diabetic
patients. However over the years need for non-invasive
insulin were strongly felt because of reluctance both on
part of physicians and patients to initiate insulin
therapy despite the well established benefits of tight
glycemic control. Extensive research and developments
are going on in the field of insulin delivery techniques
and needle-free insulin delivery appeared to be the most
wonderful and emerging approach to treat the condition.
Delivering insulin by alternative routes is a current
topic of interest in today’s era. This review article
discusses the novel and most upcoming emerging
technologies that are still in an infancy stage
including pulmonary insulin, nasal, oral, buccal,
dermal, ocular, rectal, vaginal, trans-mucosal and
implantable insulin pumps.
The discovery of insulin in 1922 by Frederick Banting
and his colleagues at the University of Toronto was one
of the greatest medical breakthrough of the 20th
century. In fact, a headline appeared in a newspaper
called Banting “the conqueror of diabetes. In the next
few years long acting insulin like protamine zinc
insulin (1930), Neutral Protamine Hagedorn i.e., NPH
(1946) and insulin zinc i.e., Lente (1952) were
discovered. In the year 1975 the first premixed insulin
was launched. Advances in chromatography in 1960 and
1970 led to the production of more highly purified
insulins. In 1979, human insulin became the first
pharmaceutical agent to be produced by the recombinant
DNA technology.1 However; all these insulin preparations
were given by SC or I.V. injection. Frequent need of
insulin injections, fear about the painful
administration of insulin injections and moreover the
concern about hypoglycemia and weight gain have
definitely put a barrier on patient’s acceptability.
Thus a kind of reluctance was seen by both patients and
healthcare professionals to start insulin therapy. Since
1920, several researchers are looking for some
alternative and painless modes of delivering insulin to
restore normal glucose levels in diabetic patients.
In this new era of development not only is the variety
of insulin preparations available growing, so are the
methods for administering insulin. In this review
article we have tried to cover some of the alternative
painless routes of Insulin delivery like pulmonary,
nasal, buccal, dermal, ocular, rectal, vaginal,
trans-mucosal and implantable insulin pumps.
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