Problem Statement

Diabetes mellitus is a common metabolic disease that is characterized by long-term hyperglycemia, peripheral resistance to human insulin and general lack of insulin production (Kumar et al. 2005). Diabetes is fairly remarkable in its impact mostly due to its far-reaching epidemiological impact; that is, in 2012, nearly 6.9% of American adults had some form of diabetes, which is staggering because this represents a 147% increase in diagnoses over 31 years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (ADA 2014) , (CDC 2014). In addition, there are predictions that by 2050 there will be 552 million cases of diabetes mellitus worldwide (Whiting et al., 2011). The umbrella term “diabetes” covers two distinct disease states, named Type-1 (or juvenile) diabetes mellitus and Type-2 (or acquired) diabetes mellitus. Type-2 diabetes tends to develop as a result of poor dietary habits, alcohol abuse, obesity, or genetic predisposition, and the increase in the incidence of diabetes mellitus as a whole is largely reflective of an increase of the incidence of Type-2 diabetes rather than an increase in juvenile diabetes (ADA 2014).

With regards to Type-2 diabetes (referred to as T2DM) specifically, a number of devastating consequences can arise from increased blood sugar levels on a regular basis, but many of the major complications of T2DM arise from drastic fluctuations in the blood glucose level (Ceriello et al., 2012). Postprandial (post-meal) blood sugar spikes specifically are one of the most damaging complications of diabetes. Many diabetics are able to effectively manage post-meal glycemic spikes with self-administered doses of insulin, but these incidents still kill more Americans per year than any other diabetes-related complications. Arguably, the gravest consequence of glycemic spikes in diabetes patients is the development of progressive macrovascular disease (MVD), which affects the large blood vessels of the body, hardening and blocking these vessels (Ceriello et al. 2012). MVD is the leading cause of death among T2DM patients in the United States, and thus it is a huge target for diabetes treatments research. MVD also frequently leads to other severe complications such as ischemia in the extremities and blindness (Haffner et al., 1998).

Luckily for many T1DM and T2DM patients, it has been shown that the regular control and management of blood glucose levels has been shown to prevent many of the vascular complications of the disease, but most of the time control over glucose is difficult to attain because of the self-dosing insulin treatment system that a lot of moderately to severely sick diabetes patients use is often hard to calibrate and use. Many people with regular hyperglycemia that are not considered diabetic also suffer the risk associated with glycemic spikes and resulting MVD, but these individuals do not have an insulin regimen to regulate high blood sugar levels typically.