Savvy Update 6/1/26 | The Savvy Diabetic

In this week’s issue of The Savvy Diabetic: 

FDA Grants Priority Review to Finerenone for Type 1 Diabetes and CKD
Abbott receives CE mark for dual glucose-ketone sensor
MiniMed launches MiniMed Go smart multiple daily injection system in US
Common food preservatives linked to high blood pressure and heart disease
AI-generated fake citations are flooding scientific literature across publications
News from T1Dto100

INTERVIEW: Hearts Afire – Surviving the 2025 Altadena Wildfire
Senior Planet From AARP: Emergency Readiness for Diabetes and Beyond 

FDA Grants Priority Review to Finerenone for Type 1 Diabetes and CKD by Ryan Livingston for HCPLive.com, 21 May 2026.

    On May 21, 2026, Bayer announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had accepted a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) and granted Priority Review for finerenone (Kerendia) for adults with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), which is supported by the phase 3 FINE-ONE trial.  The regulatory submission is based primarily on albuminuria reduction data rather than kidney failure or cardiovascular outcomes in this population.

“The FDA’s acceptance of this application underscores the clinical importance of our ongoing program for Kerendia, and growing evidence base, across broad patient populations in cardiovascular and kidney diseases,” Carolina Aldworth, MD, MSc, executive medical director at Bayer, said in a statement. “With 5 Phase 3 trials now having achieved their primary endpoints – including FINE-ONE, which forms the basis of this submission – we’re proud that this milestone brings us one step closer to potentially addressing unmet needs among people living with type 1 diabetes and chronic kidney disease.”

The proposed indication would expand finerenone beyond its current US approvals. Finerenone is already indicated to reduce the risk of sustained estimated glomerular filtration rate decline, end-stage kidney disease, cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and hospitalization for heart failure in adults with CKD associated with T2D. It is also approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, hospitalization for heart failure, and urgent heart failure visits in adults with heart failure and left ventricular ejection fraction of ≥40%.

Finerenone is a nonsteroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist. The drug blocks mineralocorticoid receptor overactivation, a pathway implicated in inflammatory and fibrotic processes in the heart and kidneys. In the T1D setting, the sNDA remains under FDA review, and the currently approved label does not include CKD associated with T1D.

Read more: FDA Grants Priority Review to Finerenone for Type 1 Diabetes and CKD

Abbott receives CE mark for dual glucose-ketone sensor by Elise Reuter for MedTechDive.com, 27 May 2026.

Abbott CEO Robert Ford first mentioned plans for sensors that can track multiple signals — such as glucose, ketones and lactate — in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2022.  With a CE mark, Abbott will be able to start marketing its dual-analyte sensor in Europe. The system is also under review by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. Ford told investors in April that the company expects approval in the second half of the year.

Libre Duo will allow people to continuously monitor both glucose and ketones, removing the need for traditional blood or urine tests typically used to check ketone levels. People with diabetes are recommended to test for ketones during periods of illness, when the body can release hormones that raise blood sugar levels. 

The authorization follows efforts by key stakeholders, such as nonprofit Breakthrough T1D, to develop best practices for continuous ketone monitoring. Competitor Dexcom has also talked about dual-analyte sensing, although plans for continuous ketone monitoring are further out. Dexcom instead plans to focus on glucose and potassium to support people with diabetes and chronic kidney disease.

Read more: Abbott receives CE mark for dual glucose-ketone sensor

MiniMed launches MiniMed Go smart multiple daily injection system in US by Sean Whooley for DrugDeliveryBusiness.com, 26 May 2026.

MiniMed announced that it began the U.S. launch of MiniMed Go, a connected smart multiple daily injection (MDI) system. The smart MDI system integrates the InPen smart insulin pen with the Instinct sensor made by Abbott. It all integrates within a mobile app to deliver real-time, personalized insights and actionable guidance. The platform targets people living with diabetes who manage their condition using MDI, simplifying insulin management without adding complexity to daily life.

While MiniMed offers automated insulin delivery systems like the 780G and Flex pumps, its other insulin delivery offering, InPen works within this system to deliver missed dose alerts to help minimize glucose highs and offers a dose calculator to simplify dose decision-making. It also features action-oriented guidance if a user misses or miscalculates a dose. CareLink software also delivers reporting for easier provider collaboration.  MiniMed says its unified mobile app experience delivers actionable guidance, dose reminders and trend-based insights. Altogether, it supports more informed day-to-day decision-making. The system can simplify the management of MDI and diabetes while providing a more connected view of glucose and insulin activity in one place.

Read more: MiniMed launches MiniMed Go smart multiple daily injection system in US

Eating foods that contain common preservative food additives may increase the risks of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, according to research published in the European Heart Journal.  The research was led by Dr. Mathilde Touvier, a research director at INSERM (the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research), and Anaïs Hasenböhler, Ph.D. student, both from the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Université Paris Cité, France. Ms. Hasenböhler said, “Food preservatives are used in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods. As far as we know, this is the first study of its kind to investigate the links between a wide range of preservatives and cardiovascular health.”  The research is part of a larger study, called NutriNet-Santé, and included 112,395 volunteers from across France. 

Researcher found that 99.5% of the volunteers had consumed at least one food preservative within the first two years of taking part.  Overall, they found that people who ate the largest amounts of “non-antioxidant” preservatives had a 29% higher risk of hypertension, compared to those who ate the least, and a 16% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke, and angina. People who ate the most antioxidant preservatives had a 22% higher risk of hypertension.

Non-antioxidant preservatives are designed to stop harmful microbes, such as mold and bacteria, from growing, whereas antioxidant preservatives are designed to stop oxidation which means the food will not turn brown or become rancid.

Researchers also looked at 17 of the most commonly eaten preservatives and found that eight of these were specifically linked to high blood pressure. These were: potassium sorbate (E202), potassium metabisulphite (E224), sodium nitrite (E250), ascorbic acid (E300), sodium ascorbate (E301), sodium erythorbate (E316), citric acid (E330) and extracts of rosemary (E392). Ascorbic acid (E300) was also specifically linked to cardiovascular disease.

Read more: Common food preservatives linked to high blood pressure and heart disease

The citations at the end of a research paper should represent a solid foundation of existing knowledge about a particular field, a pool of peer-reviewed sources built over years of research and study. However, with the increasing use of AI and large language models in writing research papers, there’s a growing chance that the citation someone clicks on may not even exist, and that the study, the source, or even the researchers themselves could be entirely fake.

In a recent study posted to the arXiv preprint server, researchers audited millions of papers and found that an estimated 146,900 hallucinated citations were present in research papers hosted on four major scientific repositories—arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN, and PubMed Central. These numbers were for 2025 alone.

The hallucinated citations were not limited to a handful of bad apples but appeared across many papers, each containing a small number of fake references, pointing to a broader pattern of researchers using AI yet failing to fact-check the output. Scientific research advances by building on prior discoveries, where each new finding depends on what has already been established. In this space, the rapid growth of AI use and the accompanying hallucinations show no sign of slowing down, which raises serious concerns.

Generative AI tools built on large language models are quite good at producing information that sounds plausible and realistic, yet is completely fabricated or incorrect. These models are trained on massive datasets to learn patterns, which they then use to predict the next word and generate new content. As a result, they can sometimes produce output based on pattern prediction rather than any reliance on actual facts.

The study found that early-career scientists and small teams were most likely to include these fake citations, and in some cases, these same researchers saw their productivity increase by roughly three times since the advent of AI. Another interesting pattern appeared where hallucinated references tended to disproportionately credit already prominent and male scholars, suggesting that errors generated by LLMs may reinforce existing inequalities in scientific recognition.

Read more: AI-generated fake citations are flooding scientific literature across publications

News from T1Dto100

INTERVIEW: Hearts Afire – Surviving the 2025 Altadena Wildfire, an interview with Dorothy Noe, T1D and survivor of the 2025 Altadena Wildfire, by Barbara Giammona for T1Dto100.com, 28 May 2026.

She saw it coming closer on social media and the TV News, she heard the howling winds, but she couldn’t imagine that it could reach all the way to her house. So many previous fires had stayed in the foothills and not ventured into the neighborhoods of Altadena, CA. But as a T1D of 61 years, Dorothy Noe smelled, and then saw, the approaching danger. Over a period of hours on January 7 and 8, 2025, she and her husband had to take action. When she evacuated her house that dark, early morning, she never imagined that she’d never return.

Dorothy: How I operated medically for the first five months with “fire brain,” I have no idea. But when I later met with my doctor, she said I was doing great. With the extreme stress, my blood sugar kept dropping. It didn’t go up. It kept dropping every time I’d turn around.  Many people helped us out. A group of type ones had a diabetic supply drive. I got a ton of things I needed.  My diabetes camp connection (Camp Conrad Chinnock – a long-time camp for type ones in the local Southern California mountains) put together supplies gathered from what we usually share with each other at camp, and [laughing] they gave us lots of camping equipment!

Any final words for our readers?  Dorothy: Think about what you need to take in an emergency, any emergency, so that you don’t have to think about that when you’re trying to leave in a panic. At this point, my one recommendation is to have an emergency plan prepared and keep your medical things together in one place.

Read more: Hearts Afire: Surviving the 2025 Altadena Wildfire

Senior Planet From AARP Presents: Emergency Readiness for Diabetes and Beyond with ADA’s Dan Hager and from T1Dto100: Jack Griswold, Joanne Milo and Laurie Harper, presented 6 May 2026, during their Lunch & Learn series on Health & Wellness.