by dr v mohanthe year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin it was in july 1921 that a group of canadian scientists led by dr frederick banting first injected an extract from the pancreas into a diabetic dog and demonstrated a profound lowering of blood glucose levelsby january 1922 the life of leonard thompson the first child with type 1 diabetes to receive insulin had been saved several children like leonard thompson would go on to live healthy lives for decades thanks to the discovery of the medicine indeed it was nothing short of a medical miracle this was in sharp contrast to the situation before 1921 when children died horrible deaths within months of diagnosis of diabetes after becoming severely emaciated and eventually slipping into a diabetic coma for the discovery of insulin the nobel prize was conferred on dr frederick banting and dr j j r mcleod the very next year in 1923 it was a record of sorts as it was the shortest time between a discovery and the awarding of the nobeluntil recently we knew very little either about the history of diabetes in preindependent india or about the introduction of insulin in our country after intense research i with the help of a few of my colleagues managed to trace the published but forgotten literature on diabetes in india between 1850 and 1940 till 1920 most treatments for diabetes included herbal or other concoctions and varying degrees of starvation but it was clear that children with type 1 diabetes in india like the rest of the world invariably perishedby the end of 1923 the year when commercial production of insulin started a brand of insulin from the uk called ab insulin short form for allen harris british drug house was introduced in india the credit of reporting the first use of insulin in children with type 1 diabetes goes to dr j p bose from calcutta an erudite scholar whose contribution to diabetes research almost a 100 years ago astounded methe first child recorded to have received insulin in india was a 12yearold girlnamed kumudini who was admitted at a hospital at calcutta in an emaciated state but she recovered dramatically after receiving insulinthe initial insulin preparations were however crude and impure improvements of insulin preparations rapidly occurred over the next couple of decades but the insulin still had to come from bovine and later porcine sources these insulins had several problems including allergy and development of resistance even more worrisome to diabetologists was the prediction in 1975 that a severe shortage of insulin would occur by 1992 scientists calculated that the world would run out of insulin at that time because the number of pigs needed to supply insulin would simply not be sufficient to treat all insulin requiring diabetic patients in the world and then the next miracle of modern science occurredin 1980 human insulin was produced by recombinant dna technology using either ecoli bacteria or yeast thereby