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Updates: American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions 2017

By July 3, 2017May 15th, 2018Tech Update, The Log Book

Words by Jen Hanson

The CIM Team is grateful for the many opportunities we get to travel throughout the country and around the world, learning about diabetes education, technology, and research. If you know us, you know we aren’t the type to sit on diabetes information. We love to share! And so, here are our top learnings from the 2017 American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions, which took place in San Diego, California, in June.

These are the things that we think will resonate with the Type 1 community and information we’d suggest you keep an eye on in months to come!

1. DHF Foundation and BT1 – The merging of tudiabetes.org and estudiabetes.org

After serving the Type 1 diabetes community for almost 10 years, the Diabetes Hands Foundation has decided to begin to wind things down. It was with a heavy heart that the announcement was made on June 8th. tudiabetes.org is a place that many of us in the CIM community first went for information, online community, and to get our questions answers. We are excited to share that Beyond Type 1 has stepped up to the place as stewards of the platforms! Although change is hard under any circumstances, we can’t think of a better group to ensure that this community continues to thrive and that both tudiaebtes.org and its Latin-language sister, estudiabetes.org continue to thrive.

2. Medtronic launches sales of the 670g in the US.

After a very speedy approval by FDA in late 2016, Medtronic USA was excited to launch sales of its 670g insulin pump just days before the conference. The CIM Team had the chance to connect with the Medtronic Team and learn more about the pump and the company’s pipeline. Keep your eyes on the CIM blog in months to come – we hope to bring you the stories of some of the very first users of the 670g directly from SoCal Slipstream in the Fall! In short, what you need to know: It’s waterproof, it has both hypo- and hyper- basal adjustment functions, and it looks similar to the 630g, currently being sold by Medtronic. It’s an exciting step forward in the work of closed-loop hybrids!

3.  There was excitement around the development of new insulins, but frustrations around insulin pricing in the US and the inability for individuals to USE that insulin reached an all-time high.

New insulins are hitting the market – from the faster-acting Fiasp (available FIRST in Canada!) to the long-acting Tresiba and biosimilar Basalgar, there is definitely a push to innovate newer, faster, better insulins. That being said, we thank our lucky stars that we live in Canada where insulin prices are reasonable. (To note – Canadian insulin prices are NOT subsidized by the government. Pricing is controlled so that companies cannot charge exorbitant prices in Canada as they can in some countries, including the USA. At the time of publishing this blog, a single bottle of Humalog costs $274.70 in the USA. If that isn’t concerning enough, that is up 7.9% from 2016.

4.  Adam Brown was working hard to get his book, Bright Spots and Landmines into the hands of the Type 1 community.

Being ever-focused on education and patient experience, we were excited to see copies of Adam Brown’s Bright Spots and Landmines in the hands of conference goers throughout the week. If you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, please do. (In fact, if you’re coming to a Slipstream this week, we’ll have copies available for you – you may even get to meet Adam!) What we like most about this book – it encourages people to shift their thinking from “What am I doing wrong that is affecting my diabetes and how can I do less of that?” To “What am I doing right and how can I do more!”. Although simple, it is proving to be revolutionary to many people. Learn more about the book, here.

5. Non-insulin options for people with Type 1

This one has got us excited. If you attended SoCal Slipstream over the past years, you may have met Dr. Gaja Andzel – Endocrinologist and fellow Type 1. She presented to us on how using what has traditionally been referred to as ‘Type 2 drugs’ can have massive impacts for individuals with Type 1. She has advocated for changing our language and to stop differentiating drugs by the group who most commonly use them and instead call them by their function – diabetes drugs. Lots of exciting things were going on as researchers assessed the effectiveness and efficacy of many non-insulin drugs for the Type 1 population. Keep your ears open for new SGLT2 and SGLT1 drugs coming to market, as well as GLP-1s (for example, Victoza) that could do leaps and bounds for Type 1 diabetes management.