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In 2017, West employees have worked diligently to help the communities in which we live and work. Through West without Borders, West's employee-led giving program, employees have raised more than $3 million for a variety of charities around the world.

There have been many innovations over the past century since it was first shown that insulin injections could help control chronic diabetes. Advances in hardware and software have resulted in more accurate blood glucose sensors that work via less invasive means and insulin pumps that have become smaller and ever more sophisticated. As we discussed in our last blog [1], there are also newer drugs, that when combined with traditional insulin therapy, can help patients better control the blood glucose levels.

The rise in type 2 diabetes has sparked a variety of treatment options, including glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists. GLP-1s are a class of injected drugs (additional oral options are currently in development) that “mimic the action of GLP-1 and increase the incretin effect in patients with type 2 diabetes, stimulating the release of insulin.”¹ Commonly used when oral treatment alone is not enough, the benefits of GLP-1s include a reduction of glucagon and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c), weight loss and a low risk of hypoglycemia.²

Glucose monitoring, or measuring the amount of sugar in the blood, is a vital part of everyday care for those suffering from diabetes. Traditional tests require patients to prick their fingers and place a drop of blood on a test strip. The strip is then placed in a glucose meter that reports the results to the patient. While this test is very accurate, it offers a reading for only a single point in time. For patients to get a range of their blood glucose levels, more frequent data is needed at a variety of different times.

When left untreated, diabetes eventually can lead to a variety of issues for patients, including complications such as stroke, blindness and heart and/or kidney disease. In addition, adherence to painful or inconvenient injection treatments can be difficult for patients, with as many at 57% of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes patients admitting to intentionally skipping injections.¹