Aug 13, 2010 Robert Adler
No Jab Blood Sugar Test - With Permission: Max GilloolyBlood sugar checks for diabetics may become a lot simpler within a few years. A new technique promises to measure blood glucose without a jab or test strip.
People with diabetes need to test their blood sugar levels frequently, from three to twelve times a day. Careful monitoring is especially vital for those with type 1 diabetes to avoid the harmful effects of blood sugar levels that zoom too high or fall too low. But since each test requires a prick with a lancet in order to draw a drop of blood and costs money for throwaway test strips, many people – up to two-thirds according to a study in Diabetes Care -- do not test as frequently as they should.
Now, however, researchers are evaluating a system that can measure blood sugar painlessly using near-infrared light. The new approach promises to improve the lives of millions of diabetics worldwide.
A Flash of Light and a Lot of Calculations
The painless blood sugar check starts with a flash of near-infrared light. After penetrating the skin and being reflected back to a detector, the light is analyzed by Raman spectroscopy. This technique detects the intensity of light scattered at different frequencies by glucose molecules.
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Know your strengths Online test discover your strengths and weakness, improve motivation! www.cappeu.com/realise2Fiber Optic Cable Testers for all cables. Wide range in stock Dependable quality, Global supplier www.kingfisher.com.auThat’s the easy part. The approach was first proposed more than 15 years ago by the late Michael Feld, a physicist and former head of MIT’s spectroscopy lab, but ran into many challenges.
The first complication the researchers encountered was that the light doesn’t penetrate deeply enough beneath the skin to detect blood glucose directly. Rather it detects the amount of glucose in interstitial fluid, the fluid that bathes skin cells.
Two graduate students at MIT’s spectroscopy lab, Ishan Barman and Chae-Ryon Kong, found a way around this problem. They studied the relationship between blood glucose levels and the levels in the interstitial fluid. That allowed them to develop a mathematical technique to translate the levels the detector measured back into blood glucose levels.
However, even that was not enough. Diabetics sometimes need to measure their blood glucose soon after eating or drinking. Blood sugar levels can soar or plummet almost instantly, but it takes five or ten minutes before those changes show up in the interstitial fluid.
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The two grad students went back to the drawing board and developed a way to calibrate the slowly changing interstitial glucose levels with the rapidly changing levels in the blood. They called this approach dynamic concentration correction, and found that it boosted the accuracy of the light-based testing by from 15 to 30 percent. That’s enough, they hope, to provide the quick, accurate numbers diabetic patients need.
Next Steps towards Painless Home Glucose Testing
Barman and Kong will launch a trial of their new approach with healthy volunteers this fall. If those tests show good results, they can then move on to tests of the device’s safety and accuracy with diabetic patients.
Their goal is a compact, portable device that a diabetic patient could simply press against a finger or arm, press a button, and get an accurate blood sugar reading without a jab, blood, or test strips. “Our device would not only eliminate the pain and inconvenience of repeated finger-prick testing, but also not require any auxiliary strips,” says Barman.
Still, people with diabetes may have to wait quite a while before they can trade in their lancets and test strips for that painless, portable and convenient way to monitor their blood sugar levels. “It is slightly difficult to predict a market entry date because of market and financial variables as well as FDA regulations,” says Barman, “but one could anticipate an optical device for glucose monitoring in the next five to seven years.”
Journal References:
Barman, I., Kong, C.-R., et al. "Accurate Spectroscopic Calibration for Noninvasive Glucose Monitoring by Modeling the Physiological Glucose Dynamics." Analytical Chemistry, July 15, 2010; 82(14):6104-6114.
Karter AJ, Ferrara A, Darbinian JA, Ackerson LM, Selby JV. "Self-monitoring of blood glucose: language and financial barriers in a managed care population with diabetes." Diabetes Care. 2000 Apr; 23(4):477-83.
Copyright Robert Adler. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
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No Jab Blood Sugar Test - With Permission: Max Gillooly
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Read more at Suite101: Good News for Diabetics - Blood Sugar Levels Without the Jab http://diabetes-treatment.suite101.com/article.cfm/good-news-for-diabetics----blood-sugar-check-without-the-jab#ixzz0x9J9HLmb
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