Closer to Closed-Loop Diabetes Care: Today's Endocrinology with Dr. Sandra Indacochea Sobel

Better diabetes care includes more than nutrition and fitness facts or discussions on the relationship between obesity and type 2 diabetes. "If we empower people with their own data, how do they take and use it?" asks Dr. Sandra Indacochea Sobel. Her primary goal is to enable an individual to understand the disease process and what the numbers and variables mean.

Listeners will get a helpful lesson in the numbers and technology in modern type 1 and type 2 diabetes treatments.

Tune in and learn

• What exactly an A1C is as well as other measures doctors may list at a visit,
• How these number and tests determine labels like type 1, type 2, and prediabetes, and
• What cutting-edge technologies are getting the medical community closer to an artificial pancreas for a hands-off closed-loop system.

Sandra Indacochea Sobel is an endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

She works in her clinical work to better explain the numbers and mechanics of diabetes to help individuals regulate their blood sugar within a certain range. It's complicated: there are so many factors that might affect these numbers, but Dr. Sobel carefully explains the major considerations in an accessible way. She also describes how doctors understand type 2 diabetes causes from a testing standing point, explaining what role C-peptide tests and antibody indications might explain. 

The Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) has taken many patients beyond finger-stick pictures as the best way to determine their type 2 diabetes diet or pump settings for type 1s. But Dr. Sobel says that we're getting closer to another huge leap, a closed-off loop which will give the patient a pump-like artificial pancreas. While not a type 1 or type 2 diabetes cure, it would mean a much improved hands-off lifestyle and care introducing insulin and glucagon independent of the patient needing to provide data. She describes the technology and work going in to such a move as well as an exciting proof-of-concept study involving aggressive early intervention for prediabetics and early type 2 patients.

Listen in to better understand the variable behind diabetes and metabolism and for hopeful news in the medical community about treatment.

For more about her work, see her page at the university: profiles.dom.pitt.edu/faculty_info.aspx/Sobel6136.

Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK