Diabetes mellitus (diabetes) is suffered by more than 180 million people and is responsible for approximately 2.9 million deaths each year. This mortality rate is expected to increase by 50 % in the next decade. Due to the inconvenience of the traditional treatment of diabetes by subcutaneous administration of insulin injection, various attempts are made in the production, purification, formulation and methods of delivery of insulin. However, despite advances in recent years, these attempts have met with limited success. Various alternative routes such as rectal, ocular, nasal, pulmonary and oral have been exploited. The pulmonary route offers great potential for the delivery of polypeptide drugs due to the large surface area for insulin absorption in the respiratory tract. But due to its low bioavailability, oral route is intensely investigated for the insulin delivery. Microencapsulation, as one of the delivery systems utilising oral route, has shown some potential progress in insulin delivery; though it is at an early stage yet it has proved to be quite encouraging providing new less toxic immunosuppressive agents. Microencapsulation may prove to be an attractive delivery system for controlled release of insulin and beneficial for therapeutic, bio-efficient and bio-effective drug delivery. In this review we discuss the possible alternative routes for insulin delivery (ocular, nasal, pulmonary and oral) and advantages and disadvantages of each. Furthermore we consider the different drug delivery strategies available (aerosols, dry powder inhalers, synthetic beta cells, hydrogels and microcapsules) and their current and potential applications with respect to the different insulin delivery routes.

Background Delays in receiving follow-up colonoscopy after an abnormal fecal immunochemical test (FIT) result are associated with increased colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Little is known about patterns of follow-up colonoscopy completion in federally qualified health centers. Methods We abstracted the medical records of health center patients, aged 50–75 years, who had an abnormal FIT result between August 5, 2017 and August 4, 2018 (N = 711). We assessed one-year rates of colonoscopy referral, pre-procedure visit completion, colonoscopy completion, and time to colonoscopy; associations between these outcomes and patient characteristics; and reasons for non-completion found in the medical record. Results Of the 711 patients with an abnormal FIT result, 90% were referred to colonoscopy, but only 52% completed a pre-procedure visit, and 43% completed a colonoscopy within 1 year. Median time to colonoscopy was 83 days (interquartile range: 52–131 days). Pre-procedure visit and colonoscopy completion rates were relatively low in patients aged 65–75 (vs. 50–64), who were uninsured (vs. insured) or had no clinic visit in the prior year (vs. ≥ 1 clinic visit). Common reasons listed for non-completion were that the patient declined, or the provider could not reach the patient. Discussion Efforts to improve follow-up colonoscopy rates in health centers might focus on supporting the care transition from primary to specialty gastroenterology care and emphasize care for older uninsured patients and those having no recent clinic visits. Our findings can inform efforts to improve follow-up colonoscopy uptake, reduce time to colonoscopy receipt, and save lives from colorectal cancer. Trial registration: National Clinical Trial (NCT) Identifier: NCT03925883.

Since the beginning of the year, the deadly coronavirus pandemic, better known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), brought the entire world to an unprecedented halt. In tandem with the global scenario, researchers in India are actively engaged in the conduct of clinical research to counter the pandemic. This review attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of the COVID-19 research in India including design aspects, through the clinical trials registered in the Clinical Trials Registry - India (CTRI) till June 5, 2020. One hundred and twenty two registered trials on COVID-19 were extracted from the CTRI database. These trials were categorized into modern medicine (n=42), traditional medicine (n=67) and miscellaneous (n=13). Of the 42 modern medicine trials, 28 were on repurposed drugs, used singly (n=24) or in combination (n=4). Of these 28 trials, 23 were to evaluate their therapeutic efficacy in different severities of the disease. There were nine registered trials on cell- and plasma-based therapies, two phytopharmaceutical trials and three vaccine trials. The traditional medicine trials category majorly comprised Ayurveda (n=45), followed by homeopathy (n=14) and others (n=8) from Yoga, Siddha and Unani. Among the traditional medicine category, 31 trials were prophylactic and 36 were therapeutic, mostly conducted on asymptomatic or mild-to-moderate COVID-19 patients. This review would showcase the research being conducted on COVID-19 in the country and highlight the research gaps to steer further studies.

An article published in this journal analyses the deficiencies in the data of interventional drug trials registered with Clinical Trials Registry-India. We wish to rebut some of the inferences and highlight the pitfalls of a purely automated analysis of registry data as posited by the authors.

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