Marking A Milestone

2021 marks 100 years since insulin was first discovered.While a lot has improved in the management of diabetes since then, researchers have even bigger hopes for the future.

- Karen Fittall

Despite being 100 years old, the discovery of insulin is still regarded as one of the biggest breakthroughs in medical history. Proof? It’s no coincidence that the date of World Diabetes Day, which occurs on November 14 every year, is the birthday of Frederic Banting, one of the researchers who made the discovery working in a lab at Canada’s University of Toronto in 1921.

In short, identifying insulin and the role it plays in diabetes was a game-changer. Just a few months later in January 1922, the first injection of insulin was given to a person, a 14-year old boy called Leonard Thompson who’d been diagnosed with diabetes two years earlier. A pharmaceutical company began producing insulin commercially the following year and the rest is history.

One hundred years on and today, 432,000 insulin injections are given every single day in Australia to regulate blood glucose levels, with insulin remaining the mainstay of treatment for people living with type 1 diabetes, which includes around 120,000 Australians.

To commemorate insulin’s 100-year anniversary, diabetes awareness, advocacy and research organisations all around the world are taking the opportunity to push for ‘more’. For example, JDRF, a foundation that funds type 1 diabetes research here in Australia, launched its #MoveTheNeedle campaign, acknowledging why 100 years is such a significant milestone while at the same time highlighting the fact that there’s still a lot of work to do.