The complications caused by diabetes are not the same for men and women, according to a new study presented during the 51st annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Stockholm.

Patients whose blood sugar and insulin delivery was managed by software had been control than those who had to self-monitor their insulin delivery. “The closed-loop system differs from conventional pump therapy and threshold-suspend approaches in that it uses a control algorithm that autonomously and continually increases and decreases the subcutaneous delivery of insulin on the basis of real-time sensor glucose levels”.

“Our main aim was to be able to show that closed-loop application works in the day and night period, especially in the long term, and without supervision….We are now at a stage where we’ve shown that prolonged 3-month, day/night use of closed-loop control in adults is feasible, and 3-month overnight control in children is feasible”, lead investigator Dr. Hood Thabit of the U.K.’s University of Cambridge told Medscape Medical News.

The adults’ glucose levels stayed within their target ranges 68 percent of the time when using the closed-loop system, as opposed to 57 percent of the time when patients were monitoring and dosing themselves. Researchers followed patients with type 2 diabetes until the study ended, patients were hospitalized for dementia, or they died.

The system is a little different from one that was tested on kids at a summer camp in the USA last year, but the results were similar, the team reported. Participants were allowed to travel and to use the system when driving.

One adult had an episode of low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, because the battery on the system ran low.

Diabetes occurs when the body is unable to transform sugar, or glucose, into energy, leading to high concentrations of sugar in the blood.

All the volunteers were fitted with both a glucose sensor and an insulin pump.

The authors said that patients with the algorithm-driven technology experienced more consistent glucose control despite the “day-to-day variability in insulin requirements”.

Kowalski said there had always been concerns about what happens when users of the technology “go out in the real world where you have exercise, you might be golfing all day, eating huge meals, and drinking alcohol”.

Seghieri, who presented the study findings at EASD 2015, said this new information should call attention to the need for timely and gender-oriented efforts to prevent cardiovascular (CV) events in adults over age 40 with diabetes.

About 5 percent of the 29 million Americans with diabetes have Type 1 diabetes.