Morgan Stanley, the investment broker, has published a report

Diabetes mellitus is defined as the "excess secretion of fluid through the kidney, accompanied by glucose." It is a fairly prevalent disease, especially in the Western world where an affluent lifestyle makes for poor dietary balance, resulting in the impairment or total loss of blood sugar control. Blood sugar levels are normally maintained at 5mMol through the actions of insulin and glucagon, the glucose-regulatory hormones. There are two types of diabetes: type I insulin-dependant affects juveniles and is thought to be an autoimmune disease stemming from a viral infection that destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Once a fatal prognosis, insulin administration is a now a way of life for these patients, along with dietary control. However, because the brain has a high dependency on glucose, they are still subject to fainting episodes or diabetic coma if their blood sugar level falls too low (hypoglycemia); Type II diabetics are distinguished because they gradually become insensitive to their own-produced insulin, and this type is distinctly related to age, diet and race. It is called non-insulin dependant diabetes mellitus - however, although at the outset the disease may be controlled via diet, the majority of patients do eventually become insulin-dependant.

The current market has suffered from a lack of new technology and development, even though the incidence of diabetes increases every year. There are approximately 1.7 million type I insulin-dependant diabetes patients and 13.8 million type II non-insulin dependant diabetics in the USA. In Europe there are currently 2.5 million type I and 16.9 million type II diabetes patients.

The actual cost of treating these individuals is enormous, both in real terms and in social cost. This is because diabetes predisposes the person to a range of devastating diseases, eg cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, blindness and peripheral nerve damage. Often the patient will become disabled as diabetic ulcers become so established that amputation is the only solution. An example of cost is demonstrated by a South Glamorgan, UK study, which found that the diabetic population makes up 1.6 % of the total patients, but consumes over 9% of the National Health Service budget. Diabetes is relatively cheap to treat in the beginning, however, with only blood glucose monitoring, insulin injections in type I and oral hypoglycemic agent administration in type II diabetics. It is the cost of the late-stage complications that provokes an enormous increment in total cost per year. The American Diabetes Association has estimated that this figure may be as much as $92 billion in the USA alone, with only 3% of this sum consumed by drug costs, the rest being made up of hospital, out-patient and nursing home costs.