News & Research

by Evan D. Rosen, M.D., Ph.D, Medical Director, Diabetes, Veritas Medicine

The history of diabetes is rich with examples of the importance of clinical trials. Indeed, one of the most dramatic moments in medical history involved a research study testing a newly discovered hormone called insulin. Frederick Banting and Charles Best injected pancreatic extracts into a 14-year-old boy named Leonard Thompson, who lay dying of diabetes in a Toronto hospital in 1922. Amazingly, the boy's high blood glucose levels improved, and he lived for an additional thirteen years. Further refinements in insulin and other drugs have led to even longer survival; all of these innovations had to be tested in humans before scientists and physicians could be sure that they worked.

Today, a patient diagnosed with type 1 diabetes can choose from a variety of insulin formulations, and patients with type 2 diabetes can choose from a rapidly expanding armamentarium of oral drugs. New developments are on the horizon, ranging from inhaled insulin to islet transplantation, and from gene therapy to stem cells. These will need to be formally tested in rigorous clinical trials before they can become part of the daily lives of people with diabetes.

If you have diabetes, the benefits of joining a clinical trial are several-fold. A trial might be the only way to obtain a new cutting-edge drug or procedure, and patients on trials often receive free expert advice about taking care of their diabetes. Finally, there is the satisfaction of knowing that because of your efforts, we will better understand diabetes, and you will have contributed in a real way to making diabetes a thing of the past.