In this week’s issue of The Savvy Diabetic:
A bipartisan bill in the US Congress revives efforts to lower insulin costs
Follow the link to send letters to your representatives!
CamDiab introduces fully closed-loop automated insulin delivery tech
Video: Towards a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes with Dr. Leonardo Ferreira
GLP-1 Drugs benefit people living with Psoriatic Arthritis
Gene Therapy Studies for Treating Type 1 Diabetes with Dr. Jeremy Pettus
Insulin does not always act the same way with Dr. Maren Schinz
The CGM Patent That Could Save Lives by Dan Heller
Circulatory dietary and gut-derived metabolites predict early cognitive decline
Obituary: Jesse Roth, Who Advanced the Understanding of Diabetes
Comparing Health Outcomes Among T1Ds in the EU and the US
Discarded Insulin Pump Triggers Bomb Squad Response
Diabetes advocates cross their fingers as a bipartisan bill revives efforts to lower insulin costs by Ali Senson for APNews.com, 2 April 2026.
A bipartisan group of senators is aiming to relieve that cost burden with the INSULIN Act, a bill to cap the cost of the lifesaving drug at $35 per month for Americans with private insurance plans. The bill, introduced last week by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and John Kennedy, R-La., would also start a pilot program to provide more affordable insulin to uninsured Americans in 10 states. A somewhat similar bill passed in 2022, as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping package from Democrats that successfully capped the drug at $35 per month for older adults on Medicare.
The legislation, the latest in a long effort by some lawmakers of both parties to rein in the price of insulin, faces many hurdles, including concerns about the cost and other competing congressional priorities. Still, with Trump in the White House and Congress now controlled by his Republican Party, it creates an opportunity for a rare bipartisan victory on health affordability in a year when rising health care costs are a concern for voters of both parties.
Urge Your US Senators to Cosponsor the INSULIN ACT! The INSULIN Act contains critical provisions that would make insulin more affordable for those who need it to survive. Urge your Senators to cosponsor this legislation!
Click Here to Send Letters to your Representatives
Read more: Diabetes advocates cross their fingers as a bipartisan bill revives efforts to lower insulin costs
CamDiab introduces fully closed-loop automated insulin delivery tech by Sean Whooley for DrugDeliveryBusiness.com, 10 March 2026.
“CamAPS Liberty represents a huge milestone for the diabetes community, marking the dawn of commercially available fully closed-loop technology. Our focus has always been on people, not just innovation,” said Roman Hovorka, founder of CamDiab. “By embedding it into our CamAPS FX app, CamDiab is ensuring this progress remains accessible, equitable and truly centered around the needs of those living with type 1 diabetes. This feature provides additional support beyond glycemic outcomes, when people need it most.”
Read more: CamDiab introduces fully closed-loop automated insulin delivery tech
Researchers around the world are exploring new ways to treat — and possibly cure — Type 1 diabetes. One promising approach focuses on replacing insulin-producing beta cells and helping the immune system stop attacking them.
In this webinar, Dr. Leonardo Ferreira shared the work his research team is doing to develop new cell-based therapies that may one day help restore natural insulin production. This discussion focused on the big ideas and what they might mean for people living with T1D, rather than complicated scientific details. Most importantly, this was a conversation. Participants had the opportunity to ask questions and engage directly with Dr. Ferreira about his research and what it may mean for the future of Type 1 diabetes treatment.
GLP-1 Drugs Pick Up Another Win, This Time in Psoriatic Arthritis by Charles Bankhead for MedPageToday.com, 30 March 2026.
“I think the early separation and statistical separation of ACR50 were really key,” said Merola. “For me, this represents a paradigm shift as we think about how other combination therapies have not made a major dent in our ability to move ACR50 and other endpoints. We’re now seeing clear improvement, and I truly believe that helping our patients deal with this key comorbidity of the disease will dramatically improve quality of life over time and frankly, survival, among these patients.”
Read more: GLP-1 Drugs Pick Up Another Win, This Time in Psoriatic Arthritis
Gene Therapy to Be Studied for Treating Type 1 Diabetes by Miriam E. Tucker for Medscape.com, 1 April 2026.
The PROGRESS study will enroll adults with T1D to receive a one-time intramuscular injection of KRIYA-839 and follow them for 1 year for both safety and efficacy endpoints. The product is designed to promote endogenous expression of glucokinase (GCK) and insulin in the quadriceps muscles, announced Jeremy Pettus, MD, an endocrinologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, at the 19th International Conference on Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) 2026.
“In the type 1 community, we’re used to [hearing] this will happen in 10 to 15 years and maybe will come one day. It’s very exciting to stand here and say that this is actually something that’s in the works and happening now,” said Pettus. The therapy involves using the nonpathologic AAV vector to deliver two genes, for GCK and insulin, into muscle. These genes then remain in the nuclei of the cells to produce genetic material for the life of the patient. “It doesn’t integrate with the host genome. It’s not changing the chromosomes,” said Pettus. “This isn’t gene editing or changing genetic makeup.” Currently approved gene therapy products are mostly for more rare, monogenic diseases. “This is a proven technology,” said Pettus. And “now the manufacturing has improved such that we can move away from the [rare] cases to more common diseases like diabetes.”
Asked to comment, ATTD meeting co-chair Tadej Battelino, MD, head of the Department of Endocrinology at UCH-UMC Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia, told Medscape Medical News that he wouldn’t use the word “cure” just yet. “I tend to be cautious, so I really can’t give promises….Does this have a potential? Very much so.” Battelino, who is also chair and professor of pediatrics at the University of Ljubljana, added that even if it’s not a complete “cure,” if it was able to achieve more than 70% of “time in tight range,” ie, 70-140 mg/dL, possibly in combination with technology, then “I’m not saying it’s a cure, but a functional cure, for sure.”
Read more: Gene Therapy to Be Studied for Treating Type 1 Diabetes
Insulin does not always act the same way with Dr. Maren Schinz by Diabetes Center Berne DCB Newsletter #1/26: Inside DCB, on Linkedin.com/company/dcberne,
This is actually a very complex question—and that complexity already contains part of the answer. Diabetes management is fundamentally multifactorial, which means there is no simple explanation. On the one hand, the body responds to insulin with varying sensitivity: hormonal changes, infections, stress, or changes in lifestyle all play a major role. On the other hand, the insulin itself can lose effectiveness over the course of therapy.
These two levels—the body and the effectiveness of the insulin—jointly influence how it works in everyday life. And that is exactly what often makes it so difficult for people with diabetes to understand what is causing unexpected glucose values. Did I miscalculate my bolus? Does my body currently need more or less insulin? Or is it possible that the insulin itself is no longer working as it should?
how stable is insulin under real-life conditions of diabetes management? When we talk about insulin activity, we mean the biological effectiveness of insulin in the body—that is, its ability to influence glucose metabolism and therefore blood sugar levels.
We know that there are defined temperature ranges in which insulin should be stored and used. At the same time, however, we also know that reality often looks different. In everyday life, insulin is always with you—on the go, while traveling, at work, in a backpack, or in a handbag. At the same time, temperatures are rising, heat waves are becoming more frequent, and temperature extremes are increasing. Many of these situations are far outside the recommended conditions. In addition, we are seeing increasing indications—both from the community and from initial research data—that insulin can lose effectiveness under such conditions.
This can lead to insulin acting more slowly, more weakly, or less predictably, even though dosage and use have remained the same. Insulin is what is known as a protein-based medication, and both heat and cold can damage its structure and thereby impair its hormonal effect. We are currently investigating exactly these influencing factors on insulin and their significance for the actual
We believe that insulin activity is a so-called “hidden factor.” Until now, people simply had no way of perceiving or checking this factor at all, given all the other factors that affect blood glucose control on a daily basis.
What we see in our research—and what will soon be published—is that it is rarely just a single factor that impairs insulin quality. Often it is a combination of everyday influences that accumulate over time. That is why it makes sense, in the case of unexplained values, to ask early on whether the insulin is still working as it should, instead of automatically questioning one’s own diabetes management.
Read more: DCB Newsletter #1/26: INSIDE DCB – Interview with Dr. Maren Schinz
The CGM Patent That Could Save Lives by Dan Heller for DanHeller.substack.com, 22 March 2026.
It turns out, this is hardly an outlier—it happens very frequently, and the severity is increasing. An article published by Hunterbrook Media titled Dexcom’s Fatal Flaws cited 57 deaths as of September, 2025. In late October, they published a follow-up article reporting three more deaths. A number of individual and class-action lawsuits are in progress. All tied to the same G7 “accuracy” problems. But to put this into perspective, 57 or more deaths — while only alleged in litigation, not yet adjudicated — represent an implied mortality rate of roughly 1 in 2,600 to 1 in 3,000 among US AID users.
Can we detect these clusters of incoherent data, and if so, what do we do? What we’re talking about here is CGM sensor integrity. The characterization of spontaneous clusters in real-world commercial CGM exports and their correlation with adverse insulin dosing events, has not, to my knowledge, been addressed in the published literature or in any public tool. To that end, I wrote an algorithm that detects these patterns in real-world glucose readings produced by any CGM with two objectives: first, to assess the runtime “health” of a sensor; and second, to correlate unreliable glucose readings to adverse events. I call my algorithm a sensor integrity detector (SID). As its name implies, it detects clusters of physiologically implausible glucose readings (PIGRs).
Read more: The CGM Patent That Could Save Lives
Circulatory dietary and gut-derived metabolites predict early cognitive decline, a study funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK Small Pump Priming Grant and published in Gut Microbes journal, 18 March 2026.
Results: Multiple linear regression modelling, adjusted for sex, BMI, age, albumin (for its role in metabolite transport), liver and kidney function, and background diet, identified key neuroprotective metabolites, namely choline, 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid, andindole propionic acid (IPA), as lower in SCI and MCI individuals compared to healthy controls. In contrast, the cytotoxic metabolite, indoxyl sulfate, and kynurenic acid were elevated. A random forest algorithm with multiclass classification further validated these findings, highlighting six metabolites (indoxyl sulfate, choline, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, IPA, kynurenic acid, and kynurenine) as classifiers of early cognitive decline.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that MDM may serve as putative composite biomarkers of early cognitive decline, offering potential clinical relevance for metabolic risk stratification and supporting the future development of minimally invasive screening tools.
Read more: Circulatory dietary and gut-derived metabolites predict early cognitivedecline
OBITUARY: Jesse Roth, Who Advanced the Understanding of Diabetes, Dies at 91 by DElthia Ricks for NYTImes.com 27 March 2026.
In a career of more than 50 years, Dr. Roth spent nearly three decades as a leading theoretician and scientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where he advanced the understanding of how cells respond to hormones and also mentored generations of young scientists.
“He was energized by science, and his enthusiasm was infectious,” Dr. Betty Diamond, the director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes, said in an interview. “He changed our whole concept about how cells respond to hormones.”
“The idea that there would be receptors for hormones — and drugs — probably goes back more than 100 years, but there was no physical evidence for the receptors,” said Dr. Lefkowitz, who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Dr. Brian Kobilka for research that revealed the inner workings of G protein-coupled receptors, the largest known class of cell surface receptors.
In 1971, Dr. Roth and his colleagues provided the first direct evidence that cells carry a specific receptor for insulin. That finding helped transform the understanding of Type 2 diabetes from a disease believed to be caused by too little insulin to one of insulin resistance at the cellular level.
Read more: Jesse Roth, Who Advanced the Understanding of Diabetes
Comparing Health Outcomes Among People with Type 1 Diabetes in Europe and the United States by dQ&A Market Research, 2024.
CONCLUSION: PWT1 in the EU have worse glycemic control, as well as worse overall mental well-being. Conversely, PWT1 in the US have stronger glycemic control, but higher rates of obesity and health complications, emphasizing the prevalence of poor weight-related outcomes in the US. Further research is needed to identify and solve the drivers of elevated A1c and the mental health burden facing PWT1 in the EU. Beyond developing new diabetes treatments,both regions must focus on improving nonmedical determinants of health – such as diet, exercise, and mental healthcare – to achieve health parity for PWT1 across the world.
Read more: Comparing Health Outcomes Among People with Type 1 Diabetes in EU and the US
Discarded Insulin Pump Triggers Bomb Squad Response At Princeton’s Palmer Square by Sarah Salvadore, Patch.com, 30 March 2026.
Out of an abundance of caution, officers secured the area and requested assistance from the New Jersey State Police Bomb Squad. After a thorough evaluation, the bomb squad determined the device was a battery-operated insulin pump that had been discarded in the garbage can. It was found to be non-hazardous and the area was deemed safe.
Read more: Discarded Insulin Pump Triggers Bomb Squad Response