Background: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) simulators, crucial for advancing diabetes treatments, often fall short of capturing the entire complexity of the glucose-insulin system due to the imprecise approximation of the physiological models. This study introduces a simulation approach employing a conditional deep generative model. The aim is to overcome the limitations of existing T1D simulators by synthesizing virtual patients that more accurately represent the entire glucose-insulin system physiology.
Methods: Our methodology utilizes a sequence-to-sequence generative adversarial network to simulate virtual T1D patients causally. Causality is embedded in the model by introducing shifted input-output pairs during training, with a 90-min shift capturing the impact of input insulin and carbohydrates on blood glucose. To validate our approach, we train and evaluate the model using three distinct datasets, each consisting of 27, 12, and 10 T1D patients, respectively. In addition, we subject the trained model to further validation for closed-loop therapy, employing a state-of-the-art controller.
Results: The generated patients display statistical similarity to real patients when evaluated on the time-in-range results for each of the standard blood glucose ranges in T1D management along with means and variability outcomes. When tested for causality, authentic causal links are identified between the insulin, carbohydrates, and blood glucose levels of the virtual patients. The trained generative model demonstrates behaviours that are closer to reality compared to conventional T1D simulators when subjected to closed-loop insulin therapy using a state-of-the-art controller.
Conclusions: These results highlight our approach's capability to accurately capture physiological dynamics and establish genuine causal relationships, holding promise for enhancing the development and evaluation of therapies in diabetes.
New therapies and treatments for type 1 diabetes (T1D) are often first tested on specialized computer programs called simulators before being tried on actual patients. Traditionally, these simulators rely on mathematical equations to mimic real-life patients, but they sometimes fail to provide reliable results because they do not consider everything that affects individuals with diabetes, such as lifestyle, eating habits, time of day, and weather. In our research, we suggest using computer programs based on artificial intelligence that can directly learn all these factors from real patient data. We tested our programs using information from different groups of patients and found that they were much better at predicting what would happen with a patient’s diabetes. These new programs can understand how insulin, food, and blood sugar levels interact in the body, which makes them valuable for developing therapies for T1D.
© 2024. The Author(s).