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The number of diabetics is estimated to have reached at least 171 million worldwide (estimated by World Health Organization, 2006) and in the US alone it creates a $132 billion/yr health care burden. Nevertheless, blood glucose control with insulin or pharmaceuticals has been available for quite some time and its proper use along with diet and exercise can give patients a long and healthy happy life. However, a patient’s attitude towards the disease and how the patient estimates the amount of insulin needed is of critical importance for well-being. Because the human body is an incredibly complex machine it is no surprise that most find it very difficult to estimate how much insulin is needed before a meal, nap, exercise, etc; even if those activities follow a strict daily routine.
CFDRC is currently developing sophisticated software tools and mathematical models to build a virtual diabetic human, dubbed Diabetic Leonardo. This diabetes simulator will be capable of learning the specific physiological characteristics of the patient/user, and then use that knowledge to predict blood glucose concentrations several hours in the future as he goes through daily life activities.
Diabetic Leonardo is an ambitious goal that draws heavily on the knowledge of countless scientists inside and outside of CFDRC working on devising clever mathematical representations for the different parts of the body (e.g. liver, arteries, pancreas, etc.) By carefully assembling these parts together we plan to recreate a virtual diabetic human that behaves like a real one. This next generation technology will be able to improve the lifes of diabetics both as educational tools to teach patients how to take better care of themselves, and as insulin pump control algorithms that predict how much insulin is needed at any given time.
 
The responses of Type I, Type II, pre-diabetes (impaired glucose tolerance), as well as normal patients (symbols) after a standard oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) were all reasonably reproduced by a preliminary version of the Diabetic Leonardo (lines).
So far, CFDRC has developed a preliminary model capable of predicting the changes in blood glucose and insulin after standard tests such as the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) for Type I, Type II, pre-diabetes (impaired glucose tolerance,) as well as normal patients. This preliminary result already dispels the widely-held notion that different models are required for different diabetes types. Next, we will make Diabetic Leonardo more flexible by enabling him to “eat”, “sleep”, and do many other things that humans do.
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