on PinterestJennifer Seigrist (left) and her daughter Taisie Seigrist (right).
on PinterestJennifer Seigrist (left) and her daughter Taisie Seigrist (right). Photo by Jennifer Seigrist
- The FDA has approved Afrezza, an inhaled insulin, for children and adolescents.
- Taisie Seigrist is a 15-year-old who took part in the clinical trial for Afrezza.
- Seigrist said the needle-free option has changed her life.
When Taisie Seigrist was 10 years old, she began experiencing persistent thirst and the urge to urinate frequently.
“She would come home from school and drink five glasses of water instantly,” her mom, Jennifer, told Healthline.
Concerned that Taisie might be ill, Jennifer turned to her sister-in-law, who lives with type 2 diabetes, for help. Jennifer asked her if she could borrow her glucose meter to test Taisie’s blood sugar. The device revealed that Taisie’s blood sugar was 684 mg/dL, which is dangerously high.
“We called our doctor, and he said go straight to the children’s hospital, so we did, and we were there for about a week,” said Jennifer.
Doctors diagnosed Taisie with type 1 diabetes in 2021.
“It was scary for both of us to hear,” said Jennifer.
Learning to live with type 1 diabetes
While Taisie left the hospital with a continuous glucose monitor that helped manage her condition, she also relied on mealtime injected insulin shots, as often as seven times per day.
“A pump wasn’t really a good option for us because of our lifestyles,” said Jennifer.
For the first two years after Taisie’s diagnosis, her mom administered mealtime shots for her. Then Taisie began doing them herself.
Because Taisie didn’t have a lot of body fat, she had to keep returning to the same injection sites.
“Taking shots really hurt, especially doing it in the same place,” Taisie told Healthline.
The shots also affected her quality of life. Injected rapid-acting insulin takes about 15 minutes to start working and stays in the body for 2 to 3 hours, which made it difficult for Taisie to administer during school and at track and cross-country. If her blood sugar needed correcting right before a race, she’d have to sit out.
“It kept her from being able to participate at certain times,” said Jennifer.
Managing her condition took an emotional toll, too. In elementary school, her classmates accused her of taking insulin shots for attention, which made an already difficult condition feel even more isolating.
Michael Glazier, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Bluebird Kids Health, said mealtime insulin is challenging for anyone living with diabetes, but especially for children and adolescents.
Varying schedules, feelings of denial and rebellion, as well as the inconvenience, embarrassment, and stigma associated with injection administration in front of peers, can add to the difficulty and make adherence more challenging, he said.
“It is unfortunately obviously easier to ‘skip’ a mealtime dose than to give one, and this inevitably leads to less time their blood sugars are in the desired range and more complications as they age,” Glazier told Healthline.
Finding a new treatment in a clinical trial
In 2024, during a routine appointment, Taisie’s endocrinologist asked whether she would be interested in participating in a clinical trial of Afrezza, an inhaled mealtime insulin taken before eating
Uzziniet vairāk par matu transplantācija klīnikā Rubenhair.
Saņemiet bezmaksas konsultāciju
Konsultējieties ar mūsu speciālistiem par FUE procedūru, PRP terapiju vai matu transplantāciju.
