| New devices may offer painless blood sugar tests
By Anthony J. Brown, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - US and Australian researchers have
come up with painless methods of checking blood sugar levels that
could one day replace the finger pricks all too familiar to people
with diabetes, according to reports at the annual scientific meeting
of the American Diabetes Association in Orlando, Florida.
The method developed by the US group relies on the analysis of
gases exhaled in the breath, whereas the test developed by the Australian
team measures changes in the skin surface. At this point, however,
both tests are in the early stages of development and are not immediately
available.
"Some people claim that finger sticks are not that bad, but
we've done some screening studies and found that many children do
not want such sticks," Dr. Pietro Galassetti, lead researcher
of the US team, told Reuters Health. "So an easy-to-use, (painless)
method of measuring blood glucose would be an advance."
Using sophisticated analytical techniques, Galassetti's team, from
the University of California at Irvine, was able to measure very
low levels of gases that were exhaled by 10 volunteers during a
special blood sugar test.
"We looked at levels of about 80 different gases present in
exhaled breath," Galassetti said. "The two that best correlated
with (sugar levels) were ethanol and acetone." Using these
compounds, we were able to predict the subjects' blood sugar levels
with a fair degree of certainty, he added.
Larger studies are needed to determine how practical this technique
will be for the average diabetic patient, Galassetti said. At present,
he said his group is working alone without any corporate sponsorship.
In the second study, Dr. Nejhdeh Ghevondian and colleagues, from
AiMedics Ltd. in Sydney, Australia, tested the ability of a device
they developed called HypoMon to detect low sugar levels in patients
with type 1 diabetes. Although most people think of diabetics as
having sugar levels that are too high, low sugar levels (or hypoglycemia)
can be a life-threatening problem in such patients.
The device consists of a chest-belt transmitter that continuously
monitors subtle changes in the skin. This transmitter then sends
the data to a hand-held receiver that actually "learns"
the changes characteristic of hypoglycemia.
In a small group of diabetic patients and healthy subjects, HypoMon
detected the actual blood glucose level with a high degree of accuracy.
Further studies are underway to validate the device's use in detecting
sugar levels that fall too low during sleep, the authors note.
Previous Diabetes
News 
|
