Have a family member who has type 1 diabetes, and the continuous glucose monitor/insulin pump technology of the past decade have been literally life-changing. His markers are now down to a normal healthy person’s, let alone a normal diabetic’s. It’s crazy.
Also have a dear friend who had their pituitary removed this week, and was wondering why we don’t have similar technology for other hormones the body needs. If we don’t, how far off are we?
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The short answer is that insulin is unique of the hormones you listed in terms of the large, rapid swings in concentration. This necessitates a pump to facilitate, which is a replacement for the older method of self administering injections. Most other hormone disorders can be treated with oral medications, as they don’t require the rapid increases in concentration that insulin does.
Most of those deficiencies don’t kill you within days without the hormone, though, so that plays a lot into it. The second part to the answer is that there’s more money in diabetes, cause America.
The good news is a lot of the newer platforms in development can be modified slightly for monitoring other markers, so we may see some collateral movement because market capture will become “cheaper” for smaller markets.
Insulin levels can be monitored in the blood, which is a very accesible. If the other hormones in question can’t be checked as easily in the blood that could be one limiting factor. If the hormone is primarily used in the nervous system for example, testing in real time ranges from complicated to impossible with our current technology.
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