Ecns
14th November 2020
Ecns
14th November 2020
Scientists rush to develop vaccine to tackle 'global epidemic of diabetes'
As the world marks the discovery of insulin by Sir Frederick Banting on November 14's World Diabetes Day, the "global epidemic of diabetes," according to the World Health Organization (WHO), continues to impact people of all ages, especially children.
Amidst the prevailing gloom, scientists are developing a vaccine to control blood sugar levels in the bloodstream. "We are actually working on a vaccine for type 1 diabetes," said Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, chief scientific officer of Novo Nordisk.
Insulin, a pancreatic hormone, helps regulate blood sugar in the human body, which causes type 1 and type 2 diabetes. While those suffering from the former cannot produce enough insulin, people having the latter don't respond to the insulin.
The vaccine will help in the treatment of type 1 diabetes – an autoimmune disease – in which the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are wrongly detected as foreign and get destroyed by the immune system. According to estimates, nearly 98,200 children under 15 years develop type 1 diabetes worldwide annually.
China has the highest number of people with diabetes worldwide, with around 116 million people suffering from the disease.