Discovery of insulin. If the symptoms of diabetes have been known since Antiquity, it is at the end of the 19th century that several investigators searched for the active substance of the pancreas and endeavoured to produce extracts that lowered blood and urine glucose and decreased polyuria in pancreatectomized dogs. The breakthrough came 100 years ago when the team of Frederick Banting, Charles Best and James Collip, working in the Department of Physiology, headed by John MacLeod at the University of Toronto, managed to obtain pancreatic extracts that could be used to treat patients and rescue them from the edge of death by starvation, the only treatment then available.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiabetes has been known since antiquity. We present here a historical perspective on the concepts and ideas regarding the physiopathology of the disease, on the progressive focus on the pancreas, in particular on the islets discovered by Langerhans in 1869, leading to the iconic experiment of Minkowski and von Mering in 1889 showing that pancreatectomy in a dog induced polyuria and diabetes mellitus. Subsequently, multiple investigators searched for the active substance of the pancreas and some managed to produce extracts that lowered blood glucose and decreased polyuria in pancreatectomized dogs but were too toxic to be administered to patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorneal pain is considered to be a core symptom of ocular surface disruption and inflammation. The management of this debilitating condition is still a therapeutic challenge. Recent evidence supports a role of the opioid system in the management of corneal nociception.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Dry eye disease (DED) is a multifactorial disease associated with ocular surface inflammation, pain, and nerve abnormalities. We studied the peripheral and central neuroinflammatory responses that occur during persistent DED using molecular, cellular, behavioral, and electrophysiological approaches.
Methods: A mouse model of DED was obtained by unilateral excision of the extraorbital lachrymal gland (ELG) and Harderian gland (HG) of adult female C57BL/6 mice.