Artificial Pancreas to Change Life of Diabetic Children

A patient receives a test for diabetes during the Care Harbor LA free medical clinic in Los Angeles, on September 11, 2014. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
A patient receives a test for diabetes during the Care Harbor LA free medical clinic in Los Angeles, on September 11, 2014. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
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Artificial Pancreas to Change Life of Diabetic Children

A patient receives a test for diabetes during the Care Harbor LA free medical clinic in Los Angeles, on September 11, 2014. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
A patient receives a test for diabetes during the Care Harbor LA free medical clinic in Los Angeles, on September 11, 2014. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

An artificial pancreas developed by a team of Cambridge researchers is helping protect very young children with type 1 diabetes at a particularly vulnerable time of their lives.

A study published on Jan. 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that it is both safe to use and more effective at managing their blood sugar levels than current technology.

Management of type 1 diabetes is challenging in very young children, because of a number of factors including the high variability in levels of insulin required and in how individual children respond to treatment, and their unpredictable eating and activity patterns. Children are particularly at risk of dangerously low blood sugar levels (hypoglycaemia) and high blood sugar levels (hyperglycaemia).

To manage children's glucose levels, doctors increasingly turn to devices that continuously monitor glucose levels and deliver insulin via a pump, which administers insulin through a cannula inserted into the skin. These devices have proved successful to an extent in older children, but not in very young children.

Current technology -- sensor-augmented pump therapy -- requires parents to review their child's glucose levels using a monitor and then manually adjust the amount of insulin administered by the pump.

Professor Roman Hovorka from the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge has developed an app -- CamAPS FX -- which, combined with a glucose monitor and insulin pump, acts as an artificial pancreas, automatically adjusting the amount of insulin it delivers based on predicted or real-time glucose levels. It is a 'hybrid closed loop system', meaning that the child's caregiver will have to administer insulin at mealtimes, but at all other times the algorithm works by itself. There are no commercially available versions of fully closed loop systems yet.

Working across seven centers in the UK and Europe, Professor Hovorka and an international team of researchers recruited 74 children with type 1 diabetes, aged one to seven years, to take part in their trial.

The trial compared the safety and efficacy of hybrid closed-loop therapy with sensor-augmented pump therapy. All children used the CamAPS FX hybrid closed-loop system for 16 weeks, and then used the control treatment (sensor-augmented pump therapy) for 16 weeks.



Europe's Oldest Lake Settlement Uncovered in Albania

A drone view shows archaeologists diving in the lake of Ohrid to uncover objects, in the village of Lin, Albania, July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Fatos Bytyci
A drone view shows archaeologists diving in the lake of Ohrid to uncover objects, in the village of Lin, Albania, July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Fatos Bytyci
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Europe's Oldest Lake Settlement Uncovered in Albania

A drone view shows archaeologists diving in the lake of Ohrid to uncover objects, in the village of Lin, Albania, July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Fatos Bytyci
A drone view shows archaeologists diving in the lake of Ohrid to uncover objects, in the village of Lin, Albania, July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Fatos Bytyci

Archaeologists working on the shores of Ohrid Lake in Albania are convinced they have uncovered the oldest human settlement built on a European lake, finding evidence of an organized hunting and farming community living up to 8,000 years ago. The team, from Switzerland and Albania, spends hours each day about three meters (9.8 feet) underwater, painstakingly retrieving wooden stilts that supported houses.

The are also collecting bones of domesticated and wild animals, copper objects and ceramics, featuring detailed carvings.

Albert Hafner, from the University of Bern, said similar settlements have been found in Alpine and Mediterranean regions, but the settlements in the village of Lin are half a millennium older, dating back between 6,000 and 8,000 years.

"Because it is under water, the organic material is well-preserved and this allows us to find out what these people have been eating, what they have been planting," Hafner said.

Multiple studies show that Lake Ohrid, shared by North Macedonia and Albania, is the oldest lake in Europe, at over one million years.

The age of the findings is determined through radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology, which measures annual growth rings in trees. More than one thousand wood samples have been collected from the site, which may have hosted several hundred people.

It is believed to cover around six hectares, but so far, only about 1% has been excavated after six years of work.

Hafner said findings show that people who lived on the lake helped to spread agriculture and livestock to other parts of Europe.

"They were still doing hunting and collecting things but the stable income for the nutrition was coming from the agriculture," he said.

Albanian archaeologist Adrian Anastasi said it could take decades to fully explore the area.

"(By) the way they had lived, eaten, hunted, fished and by the way the architecture was used to build their settlement we can say they were very smart for that time," Anastasi said.