Recombinant human insulin
Insulin is a preparation for use in diabetes therapy. It is not a drug that cures the source of the disease but only a substitute for the hormone, which is lacking or unavailable to the cells of the patient’s organism. The number of people actually using this preparation in Poland has reached 360 thousand, the figure based on data by Polish Diabetes Association. There are two main types of diabetes:
Type 1 diabetes results from the genetic, inborn damage to the beta cells in the pancreas, responsible for insulin production. The symptoms of the disease derive from a deficiency or a complete lack of endogenous insulin. Diabetes of this type emerges in childhood or in adolescence and involves the administration of insulin for the whole life. Dosage of the preparation for these patients is usually average. Life expectancy measured from the start of the therapy is between 50-60 years. Patients with type I diabetes account for 10% of the total number of patients undergoing insulin treatment, this figure based on data by Polish Diabetes Association;
Type 2 diabetes usually emerges in patients after the age of 40 and is related to eating habits and obesity. Patients from this group begin their therapy with drugs administered orally and after a period of time the progress of the disease forces many of them to use insulin, initially with small and gradually increasing to very high doses. In diabetes of this type there is no insulin deficiency. Its essential characteristic is the fact that tissue vulnerability to this hormone is steadily fading. The phenomenon, which is called insulin resistance, leads to the consumption of huge doses of exogenous insulin by patients with advanced phases of the disease.
Presently, four types of insulin are available worldwide:
Animal insulin - obtained from a pancreas of animal origin (most commonly the donors are pigs, but can include cattle and dogs). The production technology is highly complicated, there still exist irresolvable problems with purification. Insulin from pigs has a structure quite similar to the human one (it only differs in one amino acid); none the less, it immunises and allergises patients, with the result that many complications appear during therapy. At the moment it is being withdrawn from use in developed countries;
Humanised insulin - insulin from pigs, where one amino acid has been exchanged using chemical method and thus a molecule of the structure quite similar to the human hormone is obtained. Still, this preparation is deprived of most of the human insulin advantages while retaining most of the animal insulin drawbacks;
Human insulin - a product obtained by a technology based on the achievements of genetic engineering. Bacteria or fungi where the human insulin-coding gene has been introduced, produce this hormone in a fermentation process. The product obtained is identical to insulin produced by the human pancreas. Human insulin is a breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes, allowing an improvement in the comfort of life and prognosis for patients with both types of diabetes.
Human insulin analogue - human insulin, where one or more amino acids have been exchanged and thus a special characteristic of the product are obtained. What counts here is usually the time of effect, which may be shorter or longer in comparison with human insulin.
BIOTON manufactures human insulin in the substance form and in the following ready-to-use forms. Insulin BIOTON is administered with the automated applicator “Autopen” by the British company Owen Mumford Ltd.
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