Diabetes mellitus is the most common metabolic disease in industrialized countries. Diabetes mellitus is characterized by chronically elevated blood glucose, which is the result of a disturbance in the blood glucose control circuit. The cause can be impaired insulin secretion or production, reduced insulin action, or both. But how long has insulin been available to treat diabetes, who discovered it, and what is the history of insulin?
Before the discovery of insulin
Before insulin was discovered and the first people could also be treated with it, there were no treatment options for type 1 diabetics, who have an absolute insulin deficiency, other than dietary measures. Many type 2 diabetics, in whom the focus is usually on reduced insulin action, are also treated with insulin today, but there are alternatives for this form of diabetes.
1869
Paul Langerhans described island-like cell formations in the pancreas, which were named after him (Langerhans’ islets). At that time, he was unaware that these were insulin-producing cells.
1889
Twenty years later, two scientists, Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski, discovered that the symptoms of diabetes occurred in a dog that had its pancreas removed. They concluded that the pancreas was responsible for the production of a substance that plays a role in the regulation of blood glucose metabolism.
1906
German internist Georg Ludwig Zülzer treated a patient with a pancreatic extract. The patient’s condition improved steadily until the drug was discontinued. The patient died.
1921
Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best succeeded in isolating insulin from the pancreas in the laboratories of John MacLeod.
1922
In 1922, with the help of biochemist James Collip, insulin was isolated and purified. It was administered to a human for the first time. In 1923, John MacLeod and Sir Frederick Grant Banting were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, which you shared with Charles Herbert Best and James Collip.
Since 1923, thousands of diabetics have been treated with the vital hormone. Until the first genetically engineered insulin was developed in 1976, it was obtained from the pancreas of cattle and pigs. Today, this animal insulin is only used in cases of intolerance to human insulin.
1976
In this year, it was possible for the first time to produce human insulin by genetic engineering with the help of coliform bacteria. Later, yeast fungi were also used for this purpose. In 1982, human insulin produced in this way came onto the broad market.
1996
Artificial insulin analogs became available. They act faster than human insulin and thus approach the mode of action of natural insulin.
Insulin today
Prescribing insulin has become commonplace today. In Germany, many millions of people suffer from the metabolic disease, and many use insulin therapy. The discovery of insulin was thus a decisive step in the history of diabetes.
