"Ouch! This hurts. Why me?"Imagine having to prick your finger multiple times a day to maintain a life without health complications. Diabetics have to do just that -- they must check the sugar in their blood often to prevent serious short-term complications such as coma or long-term diseases affecting many organs. Currently, the most accurate and most commonly used method of monitoring blood sugars requires placing a small drop of blood on a meter. As you can imagine, the pain from poking yourself with a sharp needle several times a day can be quite a nuisance. Luckily, new research is paving the way for less invasive methods.
Ciba Vision? has developed a novel method for measuring glucose levels with the help of a contact lens. Interestingly, tears are a decent measure of sugar in the blood because of the equilibrium that exists between blood and tissue fluid. Researchers have taken advantage of this concept and have incorporated fluorescent-labeled glucose receptors, or fluorophores, into contact lenses. When glucose molecules within tears touch the lens, they bind to the fluorophores. A device resembling a pair of binoculars can then be used to measure the sugar level based on the amount of fluorescence emitted by the contact lens. Surprisingly, the contacts can still correct vision and even add a cosmetically appealing green hue to the eyes!
Rather than measuring glucose levels outside the eye, other researchers devised methods to analyze fluid within the eye. The aqueous humor is a pool of fluid sandwiched between the outer layer of the eye (cornea) and the lens,? and blood sugar levels can be estimated through this fluid as well. This approach involves shooting a beam of light through the side of the eye that travels through the aqueous humor and back out. The degree to which the light is reflected from sugar within the fluid translates to blood sugar levels.
Echo Therapeutics, Inc. has taken another approach: measuring glucose beneath the skin. This company's device delivers ultrasonic energy to the skin through an aqueous ultrasound. As a result, the skin becomes temporarily permeable, allowing fluids within to cross the skin barrier. As the sugar fluid comes up through the skin, a glucose biosensor at the top consumes all of the sugar. This creates a continuous current signal with a diffusion gradient proportional to the glucose concentration within blood vessels, which allows the device to measure blood sugar levels.
SpectRx takes advantage of another spot within the body to estimate blood sugar content -- the interstitial fluid. This clear fluid is located just under the skin and contains nutrients and glucose taken from blood vessels to feed cells. To extract the fluid from within, SpectRx researchers first use laser beams to poke microscopic holes through the dead layer of the skin. A vacuum sucks out the fluid through the holes, and the resulting fluid is collected into a patch placed on the skin that contains a glucose sensor. A wireless meter then displays the results.
Yet another gadget measuring glucose content in the interstitial fluid was developed by Medtronic and was released into the market at the end of 2006. The MiniLink REAL-Time Transmitter is a tiny electrode about the size of a quarter that has a needle the user inserts just under the skin. The sensor, which can be worn for up to three days, measures glucose levels every 10 seconds and then produces an average of these readings every five minutes. This is called real-monitoring because it lets the user know his blood sugar level throughout the day, while a finger stick offers just a single snapshot. The numbers are transmitted to an insulin pump and, armed with this new data, a diabetic can adjust his insulin levels more accurately.
Diabetics have enough health concerns to worry about aside from the additional pain of finger pricking. Advances in technology are steadily improving the quality of life for diabetics. Using a needle to draw blood and measure glucose levels may soon become a relic of the past.
Ashok is a University Medical student. He can be reached at atholpady@cavalierdaily.com.
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