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LOS ANGELES – The venerable insulin pump is being repurposed: A Detroit-area endocrinology
“We’ve seen amazing results,” said endocrinologist Opada Alzohaili, MD, MBA, of Wayne State University, Detroit, coauthor of a study released at the annual scientific and clinical congress of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Dr. Alzohaili said he and his colleagues developed the approach to manage patients who are “so sick that they go to the hospital 10-12 times a year.” Oral medication just did not control their disorder.
“Most of the time, we end up way overdosing them [on oral medication] just to prevent them from going to the hospital in adrenal crisis,” he said in an interview.
Dr. Alzohaili said his clinic has tested delivering hydrocortisone via insulin pump in about 20 patients. The report presented at the conference focused on six patients who had failed oral hydrocortisone treatment for adrenal insufficiency. Testing showed that all had malabsorption of the drug.
The patients underwent training in how to use and adjust the pump, which allows dosing adjustments in increments of 1 mg. They learned how to adjust their doses based on their situation, Dr. Alzohaili said.
According to the report, the average number of adrenal crises in the patients over a 6-month period fell from a mean of 2.3 before baseline to 0.5 after treatment began. The maximum dose of hydrocortisone dose fell by 38%, while the average mean weight of patients rose from 182 pounds to 199 pounds.
In addition, the mean dose of hydrocortisone decreased with the use of the pump delivery system, from 85.8 mg with oral treatment to 32.4 mg on pump therapy, and the mean level of cortisol increased from 11.8 mcg/dL with oral treatment to 12.3 mcg/dL on pump therapy.
The researchers said that the pump provides better delivery of the medication compared with the oral route, and that the patients experienced fewer interactions with other medications.
Some patients developed skin reactions to the pump, but those adverse events were resolved by changing the pump’s location on the body and by using hypoallergenic needles, Dr. Alzohaili said.
There were fewer cases of clogging with the pumps than is normally seen when they’re used with insulin, he added.
As for expense, Dr. Alzohaili said the pumps cost thousands of dollars and supplies can cost between $100 and $150 a month. In the first couple of cases, patients paid for the treatment themselves, he said, but in later cases, insurers were willing to pay for the treatment once they learned about the results.
Other researchers have successfully used insulin pumps to deliver hydrocortisone to small numbers of patients with adrenal insufficiency, including British and U.S. teams that reported positive results in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
The next step, Dr. Alzohaili said, is to attract the interest of insulin pump manufacturers by using the treatment in more patients. “I’ve spoken to CEOs, but none of them is interested in using cortisol in their pumps,” he said. “If you don’t have the company supporting the research, it becomes difficult for it to become standard of care. So I’m trying to build awareness [of its use] and the number of patients [who use the pump].”
Dr. Alzohaili reported no financial conflicts of interest or disclosures.
LOS ANGELES – The venerable insulin pump is being repurposed: A Detroit-area endocrinology
“We’ve seen amazing results,” said endocrinologist Opada Alzohaili, MD, MBA, of Wayne State University, Detroit, coauthor of a study released at the annual scientific and clinical congress of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Dr. Alzohaili said he and his colleagues developed the approach to manage patients who are “so sick that they go to the hospital 10-12 times a year.” Oral medication just did not control their disorder.
“Most of the time, we end up way overdosing them [on oral medication] just to prevent them from going to the hospital in adrenal crisis,” he said in an interview.
Dr. Alzohaili said his clinic has tested delivering hydrocortisone via insulin pump in about 20 patients. The report presented at the conference focused on six patients who had failed oral hydrocortisone treatment for adrenal insufficiency. Testing showed that all had malabsorption of the drug.
The patients underwent training in how to use and adjust the pump, which allows dosing adjustments in increments of 1 mg. They learned how to adjust their doses based on their situation, Dr. Alzohaili said.
According to the report, the average number of adrenal crises in the patients over a 6-month period fell from a mean of 2.3 before baseline to 0.5 after treatment began. The maximum dose of hydrocortisone dose fell by 38%, while the average mean weight of patients rose from 182 pounds to 199 pounds.
In addition, the mean dose of hydrocortisone decreased with the use of the pump delivery system, from 85.8 mg with oral treatment to 32.4 mg on pump therapy, and the mean level of cortisol increased from 11.8 mcg/dL with oral treatment to 12.3 mcg/dL on pump therapy.
The researchers said that the pump provides better delivery of the medication compared with the oral route, and that the patients experienced fewer interactions with other medications.
Some patients developed skin reactions to the pump, but those adverse events were resolved by changing the pump’s location on the body and by using hypoallergenic needles, Dr. Alzohaili said.
There were fewer cases of clogging with the pumps than is normally seen when they’re used with insulin, he added.
As for expense, Dr. Alzohaili said the pumps cost thousands of dollars and supplies can cost between $100 and $150 a month. In the first couple of cases, patients paid for the treatment themselves, he said, but in later cases, insurers were willing to pay for the treatment once they learned about the results.
Other researchers have successfully used insulin pumps to deliver hydrocortisone to small numbers of patients with adrenal insufficiency, including British and U.S. teams that reported positive results in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
The next step, Dr. Alzohaili said, is to attract the interest of insulin pump manufacturers by using the treatment in more patients. “I’ve spoken to CEOs, but none of them is interested in using cortisol in their pumps,” he said. “If you don’t have the company supporting the research, it becomes difficult for it to become standard of care. So I’m trying to build awareness [of its use] and the number of patients [who use the pump].”
Dr. Alzohaili reported no financial conflicts of interest or disclosures.
LOS ANGELES – The venerable insulin pump is being repurposed: A Detroit-area endocrinology
“We’ve seen amazing results,” said endocrinologist Opada Alzohaili, MD, MBA, of Wayne State University, Detroit, coauthor of a study released at the annual scientific and clinical congress of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Dr. Alzohaili said he and his colleagues developed the approach to manage patients who are “so sick that they go to the hospital 10-12 times a year.” Oral medication just did not control their disorder.
“Most of the time, we end up way overdosing them [on oral medication] just to prevent them from going to the hospital in adrenal crisis,” he said in an interview.
Dr. Alzohaili said his clinic has tested delivering hydrocortisone via insulin pump in about 20 patients. The report presented at the conference focused on six patients who had failed oral hydrocortisone treatment for adrenal insufficiency. Testing showed that all had malabsorption of the drug.
The patients underwent training in how to use and adjust the pump, which allows dosing adjustments in increments of 1 mg. They learned how to adjust their doses based on their situation, Dr. Alzohaili said.
According to the report, the average number of adrenal crises in the patients over a 6-month period fell from a mean of 2.3 before baseline to 0.5 after treatment began. The maximum dose of hydrocortisone dose fell by 38%, while the average mean weight of patients rose from 182 pounds to 199 pounds.
In addition, the mean dose of hydrocortisone decreased with the use of the pump delivery system, from 85.8 mg with oral treatment to 32.4 mg on pump therapy, and the mean level of cortisol increased from 11.8 mcg/dL with oral treatment to 12.3 mcg/dL on pump therapy.
The researchers said that the pump provides better delivery of the medication compared with the oral route, and that the patients experienced fewer interactions with other medications.
Some patients developed skin reactions to the pump, but those adverse events were resolved by changing the pump’s location on the body and by using hypoallergenic needles, Dr. Alzohaili said.
There were fewer cases of clogging with the pumps than is normally seen when they’re used with insulin, he added.
As for expense, Dr. Alzohaili said the pumps cost thousands of dollars and supplies can cost between $100 and $150 a month. In the first couple of cases, patients paid for the treatment themselves, he said, but in later cases, insurers were willing to pay for the treatment once they learned about the results.
Other researchers have successfully used insulin pumps to deliver hydrocortisone to small numbers of patients with adrenal insufficiency, including British and U.S. teams that reported positive results in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
The next step, Dr. Alzohaili said, is to attract the interest of insulin pump manufacturers by using the treatment in more patients. “I’ve spoken to CEOs, but none of them is interested in using cortisol in their pumps,” he said. “If you don’t have the company supporting the research, it becomes difficult for it to become standard of care. So I’m trying to build awareness [of its use] and the number of patients [who use the pump].”
Dr. Alzohaili reported no financial conflicts of interest or disclosures.
REPORTING FROM AACE 2019
