WORLD DIABETES DAY

Insulin was discovered by Sir Frederick G Banting (pictured), Charles H Best and JJR Macleod at the University of Toronto in 1921 and it was later purified by James B Collip. It was one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in history, which went on to save millions of lives around the world and triggered a century of diabetes discoveries.

Insulin is a hormone created by our pancreas that controls the amount of glucose in our bloodstream at any given moment. It also helps store glucose in our liver, fat, and muscles, and, it regulates our body’s metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

Fredrick Banting and his team saw regular drops in blood sugar levels as a result of their extract, and were confident they were on to something big. By November, they’d successfully treated a dog with diabetes with their insulin extract for 70 days.

In January 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old boy dying from type 1 diabetes, became the first person to receive an injection of insulin. Within 24 hours, his dangerously high blood sugar levels dropped, but he developed an abscess at the site of the injection and still had high levels of ketones.

On 3 May 1922, JJR Macleod announced the discovery of insulin to the international medical community, presenting a paper called 'the effects produced on diabetes by extracts of pancreas,' at a meeting of the Association of American Physicians in Washington. It was the first time the team used the word “insulin”.

In recognition of their life-saving discovery, Banting and Macleod were jointly awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Banting split his half of the Prize money with Best, and Macleod split the other half of the Prize money with Collip.