Inhaled insulin

There has been a recent development in the mode of delivery of the insulin treatment where the patients who are suffering from diabetes can now administer insulin in their body through inhalers and not have to inject that in their body.

During the last few weeks, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the new inhaled insulin that was being produced by Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company, which came in the market with the name of Exubera, which is the insulin treatment both for type 1 and type 2 diabetics. This is a new alternative that is there for people to use as it is pretty easy to get the required dosage of insulin through inhalers. This alternative is there for about 5 million people in America.

The pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, has not yet disclosed the price of the drug, Exubera. The company is thinking to bring the drug into the market in about six months or so. There is a general opinion by the analysts that this drug is going to be much expensive than the insulin injections. According to an estimate, the price of the drug, Exubera is expected to be at a price of about $4 a day, which is about three to four times more than the daily cost of insulin that is being administered through injection.

In order to briefly discuss about diabetes, it is a disease in which the insulin production is affected, which produces an imbalance of the sugar control in the body. The mechanism with which the Exubera works is that it is inhaled into the lungs and then it gets into the blood stream and controls the sugar in the blood. The pharmaceutical company says that the patients will be taking this medicine before each meal or at least three times a day to control their blood sugars.

As a word of caution, the doctors stated that there is no data yet to support the history and efficacy, as is established in case of injections; the people who are using the inhaled medicine should use this medicine cautiously.

Since Exubera is a high priced drug therefore it is going to be a lot expensive for the consumers to use, though on the other hand the insurance companies that are providing the prescription plans to their clients would prefer older remedies over the newer ones, as the new modes are expensive. If these medicines would be on the list of the companies, these medicines would be in an expensive tier, which is known as formulary. In this process the patients had to copay as high as $40 to $50 for Exubera, where for the injected insulin it would be $10 to $25.

Since the insulin dosage varies among different patients, each prescription of Exubera will include about 30 days of insulin.

This new discovery is going to bring a whole lot ease for the people and will improve the lifestyle and quality of life of a lot of people.


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