Mark Deboer
University of Virginia, VA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Exercise is good for people with type 1 diabetes (T1D), but it is also risky. Physical activity changes how the body responds to insulin, so blood sugar can crash (hypoglycemia) during or after a workout.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
type 1 diabetes
automated insulin delivery
artificial pancreas
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Test whether adding real-time tracking of insulin sensitivity to the APEX automated insulin system lowers hypoglycemia risk (Low Blood Glucose Index) during and after exercise, in a randomized crossover hotel study.
- Test whether an "activity-on-board" module, accounting for the lingering effect of prior exercise on insulin needs, improves blood glucose control compared with APEX alone.
- Test whether APEX can detect a person's daily physical activity patterns and reduce insulin ahead of likely exercise to prevent low blood sugar in supervised trials.
- Confirm in a randomized crossover home study, using 3-week sessions and usual activity, that the activity-informed APEX system improves glycemic control.
More about the research
Many people with T1D avoid exercise because they fear these lows or find it hard to plan insulin around activity. This project tests ways for an automated insulin pump to handle exercise on its own. The aim is to make physical activity safer without requiring the user to do extra planning.
Why it matters
People with type 1 diabetes are often discouraged from exercising by the risk of dangerous low blood sugar and the work of adjusting insulin around activity. An insulin delivery system that automatically adapts to exercise could reduce hypoglycemia and let people with T1D be active more spontaneously. That would make it easier for them to gain the many health benefits of regular physical activity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Francisco Pasquel
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a multicenter randomized trial whether automated insulin delivery with a disposable patch pump and remote real-time continuous glucose monitoring increases time in target glucose range (70–180 mg/dL) compared with daily insulin injections plus CGM in hospitalized adults.
Jenise Wong
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Partner with Latinx teens with type 1 diabetes, their families and clinicians through focus groups and semi-structured interviews to adapt a virtual peer group model that promotes starting and continuing diabetes device use.
William Tamborlane
Yale University, CT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Provide shared infrastructure for complex human diabetes studies, such as insulin-glucose clamps, MRI and spectroscopy, PET scans, stable isotope infusions and indirect calorimetry, in adults and children.
The school
University of Virginia: 43 labs on PI Pages, $814M a year on research, 413 research doctorates a year.
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