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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Diabetics know how crucial it is to find a way to cope with their condition. So does the Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi, which has renamed the disease "LIVE-a-betes" for its 37th annual Super Conference.
Foundation president Rick Carlton said educating diabetics and their family members about the disease is one of the foundation's greatest goals and the reason for the conference, which will be held Feb. 20 at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Jackson.
"There's such a critical need for this knowledge, especially in Mississippi where we struggle mightily with Type 2 diabetes," Carlton said.
The diabetes conference brings speakers from around the nation and typically attracts even more participants than can be accommodated. This year, keynote speaker Scott Scolnick, senior research scientist in the College of Biomedical Engineering's Bionic Pancreas Program at Boston University, will discuss technological advances within his field.
The bionic pancreas, called the iLet, aims to gauge insulin and blood sugar levels, mostly in patients with Type 1 diabetes, and releases the hormones automatically as necessary.
Scolnick, who has Type 1 diabetes, was one of the first patients to wear the dual hormone external pump.
"It changed my life," Scolnick said.
Type 1 diabetics typically have access to technology that tests their blood sugar, but they must estimate on their own how much insulin to take or food to eat based on their past or future food intake and exercise. If that sounds complicated, that's because it is.
"Every meal is a mathematical formula," said Della Matheson, another conference speaker. "You're making judgment calls all day long."
The iLet is able to test the levels in each patient based on a mathematical algorithm that Scolnick's team developed and release not only insulin when sugars are too high, but the hormone glucagon when blood sugar levels are too low.
"Our system totally relieves the patient and the family from needing to make any decisions," Scolnick said. "The diabetes management that takes up so much time and energy not only physically but psychologically, we take that away by our subjects wearing this device."
The conference will include several other speakers, including dietitian Autumn Douglas, a certified diabetes educator, who will discuss ways to address Type 2 diabetes with diet.
"You can still do interesting and fun things with your diet, which I hope means people would be more committed and stick to it better," Carlton said.
While Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are separate conditions, they both manifest in high blood sugar. The majority of people who suffer from the disease have Type 2 diabetes, which is closely associated with lifestyle __ diet and exercise.
In 2014, Mississippi was tied for second with Tennessee for the highest rate of diabetes at 13 percent of the population. It followed only West Virginia at 14.1 percent. In the same year, Dr. Richard deShazo at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson warned that one-third of Mississippi's population will have diabetes by 2030, The Guardian reported.
"Part of it is cultural; and then lack of awareness of what the risk factors of diabetes are and what you should do about it if you're at risk; and then if you have it what you should do about it," Carlton said.
Matheson, a trial coordinator for the University of Miami Clinical Center for Type 1 diabetes TrialNet, will give an update on diabetes research at the conference.
"The process that leads to Type 1 diabetes we know begins long before the person actually gets the disease," Matheson said.
Matheson emphasizes that Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, making the research on stem cell replacement so critical. When she first began researching ways to eradicate Type 1 diabetes, she thought her team would be able to identify the key risk factors and correct them, preventing the disease.
But the process became more daunting than she realized.
"For every little onion skin you peel back with answering one question, it leads to another. The immune system is extremely complex," Matheson said. "It's important for people to understand the research is going on, how collaborative it is, how many people are working on it, and really how far we've come."
One recent advancement, Matheson explained, came when scientists discovered the liver was not the best site to implant beta cells, the cells that produce insulin. Instead, they began implanting them in the fatty layer of the patients' abdomen, which is less potentially dangerous.
Matheson said having Type 1 diabetes makes her sensitive to how solutions and cures are reported in the media. When she was diagnosed nearly 35 years ago, doctors told her there would be a cure in 10 years.
In 2016, Scolnick said, the scientific community is still at least a decade from a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
Still, researchers are getting closer and closer.
"We're launching into a new era of looking at the issue in a more complex way to stop the autoimmune process," Matheson said.
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Information from: The Clarion-Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com
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