Tablets in the treatment of diabetes

Abstract

There are several types of tablets available which are used for diabetes, and some of them have been used for a long time. Often, patients ask why they can’t take ‘insulin tablets’ or ‘insulin by mouth’. The first thing to realize is that insulin itself cannot be taken in tablet form as it would be broken down by the acid and enzymes in the stomach, rendering it useless. The available tablets for diabetes work in a different way, either stimulating the pancreas to push out more insulin than it is doing, or by increasing the activity of the available insulin. Therefore, it is obvious that anyone who is going to take these tablets with effect must be capable of producing some insulin from their Islets of Langerhans. Juvenile onset diabetics, by the very nature of their disorder, have very little or no insulin and therefore in such cases there is no chance of the diabetes being controlled with tablets. In maturity onset diabetics, on the other hand, there is very often a significant amount of insulin being produced by the pancreas, although not enough to prevent the onset of diabetes. The use of tablets, therefore, is confined to the maturity onset diabetic and tablets are seldom used in juvenile onset diabetics.