Dealing with diabetes: Artificial pancreas

[Izawa]

Hi,
I am entering a science fair and my project is based on the "dealing with diabetes" project in science buddies. Although, I have successfully created the circuit, I want to change the objective. Could I get any help finding a different objective than the one mentioned in the site? I was thinking of " Is an artificial pancreas comparable to the efficiency of a real one" as my project objective. Please suggest.

[SciB]

Hi,

The artificial pancreas in the project is simply a model that demonstrates the principal of how insulin causes the uptake of glucose from the blood and lowers the concentration. You can't really experiment with it as if it were a real pancreas. What alternative objective were you thinking of? If you look in the 'Make it Your Own' section of the project guide:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... eityourown

there is a variation in which you add additional vinegar to represent an increase in blood glucose as happens in normal human digestion. As the pH drops the pump should turn back on an neutralize the vinegar. You could measure the amount of baking soda pumped in for a given amount of vinegar and plot this over time. If you do a search online you should be able to find some data for how fast on average the blood glucose levels drop in response to secretion of insulin by the pancreas. This would relate your project to human physiology. You could also include a similar plot of the rate of blood glucose change in a type 2 diabetic with impaired pancreatic activity. You could model this by reducing the pumping rate of the baking soda in your artificial pancreas.

This is really all I can think of to expand your project. Let us know if you have more questions.

Sybee

[Izawa]

Thanks,
The second variation in the make your own section really got me thinking. Now I am thinking of making my objective "how much insulin is required to maintain the blood sugar level of a type one diabetic?" I have found data on how much sugar is in the blood after a type on diabetic has eaten. Does this seem like it is feasible?

[SciB]

Hi,

I'm not sure I understand what you are proposing. Do you mean to use the pancreas model to show changes in the amount of base that needs to be added to neutralize various amounts of acid? This really does not tell you anything about type 1 diabetes because it is purely an artificial situation--a demonstration of how the actual human system works.

Or did you mean that you want to quantitate how much insulin a type 1 diabetic needs to take to normalize a certain level of glucose? If you have a friend or family member who is diabetic you could ask them to record their blood glucose levels before and after taking a known dose of insulin. Then you could see the effect of a specific amount of insulin on the glucose level.

Here's a reference that talks about how to calculate the insulin to carbohydrate ratio for keeping a balanced blood glucose level: http://dtc.ucsf.edu/types-of-diabetes/t ... ulin-dose/

Let us know if you have more questions.

Sybee

[Izawa]

Hi,
I have checked the variation section many times. I am not sure how those suggestions can help me change the objective of my project. I want to incorporate the model of the artificial pancreas in my project, any suggestions?

[SciB]

Hi,

If you want to do an experimental project on diabetes itself then you might want to consider my suggestion in the previous post about showing the effects of various insulin doses on blood sugar levels.

I must emphasize that a demonstration using an electronic model is not a hypothesis-driven science project. Researchers do use model systems but only those that mimic physiological conditions as closely as possible.

If you just want to work with the artificial model then you could do the variation where you use different amounts of acid to represent different glucose levels and measure the amount of base it took to neutralize it. You can plot the volume of acid vs the volume of base: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... eityourown
You could also use a more or less concentrated solution of base to see how that effects the relative volumes of acid and base. That would represent a diabetic using a different insulin dose.

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions.

Sybee

[Izawa]

Thanks for your suggestions, I like the second one about adding different amounts of glucose and changing the concentration level- but I am not sure how to derive an objective for it can you help?

[SciB]

The objective of a demonstration like the artificial pancreas is to show a model that acts similar to what happens in the body. When a person eats a candy bar their blood sugar spikes and the pancreas has to pour out insulin to bring the glucose level back to normal. In your model the glucose is represented by vinegar solution so your objective is to model the effect by increasing or decreasing the volume of vinegar and measuring how much base ('insulin') it takes to neutralize it.

Sybee

[nikdat2020]

Hello,

I chose to build the Artificial Pancreas model for my Science Fair Project. This is an idea of how I plan to word my hypothesis. What do you think about it? Does it sound okay?

Hypothesis:

If additional vinegar is added (to represent the increase in glucose in a diabetics body) then the “artificial pancreas” pumps in baking soda until the solution is neutralized(indicating normal blood sugar) because the function of the artificial pancreas is to keep normal blood sugar by pumping insulin whenever there is excess glucose in a diabetic patient’s blood.


In my experiment, how many times do you think I should keep adding vinegar to the solution to test the artificial pancreas model? For example, how many readings should I take? 5? 10? 15? More than that?

Thanks for any suggestions.