Scientists’ new medical jelly may replace painful injections for diabetics

A MEDICAL jelly has been developed that could mean the end of painful injections for diabetics as well as a range of other treatments.

The new gel, which is designed to be swallowed, offers a way to deliver a range of treatments that can only be injected.

They include insulin, which diabetics have to self-administer by injection every day.

The gel could also be used to deliver drugs for inflammatory bowel disease, bowel cancer and some infections, it is claimed.

Scientists in India have tested the system successfully in the laboratory and want to move on to human trials.

Many medicines cannot be taken as pills or capsules because they are destroyed by powerful stomach acids and enzymes before being absorbed into the body.

Instead they have to be injected, either under the skin, or into a muscle or vein.

The hydrogel developed at the Government Model Science College in Jabalpur passes through the stomach largely unscathed and protecting the drug trapped within it.

When it reaches the large intestine, more alkaline conditions there cause the gel to swell and release its medicine.

The large intestine, or colon, is a place where drugs are readily absorbed by the body.

Colon-targeted drug delivery has been explored by many teams of scientists.

But the problem in the past has always been surviving passage through the stomach.

The gel is a “terpolymer” - a short chain of three chemical elements linked together.

Scientists tested the system by loading vitamin B2 in the form of riboflavin into the gel and subjecting it to conditions which mimicked those in the human gut.

They found it produced a targeted, controlled release.

Dr Sunil Bajpal, who led the research, yesterday reported in the journal Polymer International: “The terpolymeric hydrogel system studied by our team provides an alternative to the parenteral (injected) medication of insulin.

“It is now necessary to carry out in vivo (clinical) studies of this hydrogel system so that it could be further modified to produce oral delivery pills.”

Research found the length of time it took for the gel to pass through the body might influence its effectiveness.

‘Gastrointestinal transit time’ varies between 45 and more than 570 minutes from person to person.