Diabetes: Clinical trials are to be held at hospitals in Galway and Dublin for a new inhaler which could replace daily insulin injections for thousands of people with diabetes in Ireland.
The inhaler, which is being marketed under the name Exubera and hailed as a major advance in the treatment of diabetes, is to go on the market in the UK in May.
While the medication has not yet been licensed to go on the market in Ireland, two pilot trials will take place - one at University College Hospital Galway and the other at St James's Hospital in Dublin.
Consultant endocrinologist at UCHG Dr Fidelma Dunne explained that a group of patients would be selected for treatment with Exubera.
"The inhaler will be used in patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. It will replace some of the delivery of insulin by injection, but it will not be suitable for everyone," she said.
Dr Dunne said the new inhaler would be an important development for patients with diabetes as it would improve the "acceptability" of the delivery of insulin.
"It will be a big improvement on patients having to inject themselves a few times daily," she said.
When the Exubera inhaler becomes available in the UK in May, some 320,000 of the 800,000 people who take daily injections of insulin there will be eligible to use it.
The new powder form of insulin, which will be inhaled before meals through a hand-held device similar to those used to administer asthma drugs, will replace some, but not all of these injections.
People with type 1 diabetes, which is usually diagnosed in childhood, will still have to take a daily main injection of insulin, but the additional three to four top-up shots taken during the day, could be replaced by the inhaler.
People with the more common type two diabetes, who take only the top-up shots, could avoid the injections altogether by using the inhaler.
The European Medicines Evaluation Agency last week granted Pfizer a licence to market Exubera in the UK after trials involving 3,500 people with diabetes. The licence restricts children, pregnant women, people suffering from respiratory illness and smokers from taking the drug.
Director of Diabetes UK Simon O'Neill said the Exubera inhaler could prove to be one of the biggest steps forward in the treatment of diabetes since the discovery of insulin in 1923.
