time
AS
GOES BY
World Diabetes Day is on
November 14. Here are the
discoveries and developments
that changed the lives of
people living with diabetes
History has it that the
very first reference to what
we now know as diabetes was
made more than 3500 years ago.
But it wasn’t until just over a
century ago, in the early 1900s,
that medical scientists began
to make significant discoveries
and breakthroughs that would
lead to the diabetes knowledge,
advocacy and treatments
we take for granted today.
Here’s how it all played out.(^1910) After researchers
discovered in the late 1880s
that animals develop symptoms
of diabetes if their pancreas is
removed, British physiologist Sir
Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer
decides to examine the organ
more closely. He was the first
to discover a substance that’s
produced by people who
don’t have diabetes: insulin.
(^1922) The first insulin injection
is given to a person – 14-year-old
Leonard Thompson, who’d been
diagnosed with diabetes when
he was 12. It came after the
discovery that when insulin
extracted from healthy dogs
was injected into dogs with
diabetes, their BGLs went down.
Leonard’s injections were a
great success
- while the
average
life expectancy of a child with
diabetes at the beginning of
the century was roughly a year,
post diagnosis, Leonard lives
until the age of 27. In 1923 a
pharmaceutical company began
producing insulin commercially.(^1936) Although insulin
injections were effective, they
didn’t work for everyone. In
1936 it’s finally discovered that
there are two different types
of diabetes, and that some
people living with the disease
still produce insulin. The
different types were labelled
‘insulin-sensitive diabetes’ and
‘insulin-insensitive diabetes’.
(^1937) Australia’s first Diabetic
Association is formed in NSW.
It wasn’t until the early 1950s that
similar associations were formed
in other states and territories.