VICON T-SERIES HELPS NEONATAL DIABETES PATIENTS VISUALIZE TREATMENT

15 October 2009, Oxford, UK: Professors Andrew Hattersley and Frances Ashcroft have been using a Vicon T-Series system for a virtual reality display to help children with neonatal diabetes. The condition is a rare but severe form of the disease that previously meant a life of daily insulin injections and strict diet monitoring, often from birth.

The research of Hattersley and Ashcroft, who found that the condition was caused by a genetic mutation disrupting a critical potassium channel involved in the insulin secreting pathway has transformed patient’s lives.  Well-known drugs called sulphonylureas restore the channel's normal behavior and minimize the need for injections and diet regulation.

A patient with neonatal diabetes has a closed potassium channel, which means insulin secretion cannot occur. The drugs reverse this genetic mutation, opening up the channel allowing insulin to pass through. This change in the channel was difficult to explain to patients, but Ashcroft and Hattersley co-opted the help of Dr. Andrew Glennester, a virtual reality expert, and Dr. Phil Stansfeld, a molecular modeler, to re-create the potassium pathway in a virtual reality (VR) environment. In the VR environment, the patient uses a hand held control with markers attached, which when moved from left to right, causes the channel to open and close, giving them a visual understanding of how the drugs work.