Insulin First Used Successfully 86 Years Ago

Main Category: Diabetes
Article Date: 14 Jan 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Eighty-six years ago Canadian Frederick Banting administered the first insulin injection.

In 1922 Banting's work came to a head as he injected a man called Leonard Thompson with insulin. Thompson lived for another 13 years.

Banting thought of his "great idea" to find the active secretion of the Islets of Langerhans whilst working at a medical school in Ontario. He persuaded Professor JJR Macleod of Toronto to help him along with Charles Herbert Best and James Bertram Collip.

They conducted research on depancreatised dogs which was central to the discovery of insulin.

Nobel Prize

Banting and MacLeod were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1923.

Although Banting's contribution to diabetes and other medical research was cut short when he died in an air crash in 1941, the discovery of insulin has saved the lives of many people with diabetes and transformed the quality of life for countless more.

http://www.diabetes.org.uk