Volunteers Get $40, Free Meal Testing Diabetics' Nasal Spray

For $40 and a free lunch, several Harvard students have given one morning this fall to researchers testing the effectiveness of nasal spray insulin for diabetics.

About 75 volunteers have participated in the research since last October, including seven from Harvard since July, according to one of three doctors overseeing the experiment at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Hospital. The majority of the subjects are "normal," but a few diabetics have also participated, another doctor said.

New Methods

"We're comparing nasal administration to other methods, and our preliminary experiments to date are very encouraging," commented Dr. Alan C. Moses, assistant professor of medicine. Currently, diabetics must receive insulin through injections.

The experiment probably will not be completed until 1984, added Dr. Robert D. Silver. More students will enter the experiment until then.

Funding for the project, which Moses said will end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, is coming from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and the researchers are hoping for a grant from the National Institute of Health.

Students answering the doctors' advertisement for volunteers, posted in Byerly Hall, take a blood test and enter the hospital's Clinical Research Center a week later.

Subjects are instructed not to eat after midnight the evening before the test. During the three-to four-hour monitoring period, blood samples are taken every five to ten minutes from subjects, but Silver said the total amount comes to less than four ounces.

The blood samples are used to determine how much the insulin reaches bloodstream over a given time period. Another drug, Adjuvent, is sprayed on the nasal membranes to enhance the absorption of the insulin.

Because subjects tend to suffer low blood-sugar concentrations after the experiment is through they eat a free carbohydrate-rich lunch and receive a stipend of $40, Silver said.

Diabetes is a disease which hinders the normal processing of glucose in the blood. Insulin controls the level of blood sugar and enables many people to live with the disease.