New Blood Sugar Sensor
Improves Diabetes Control
Blood Glucose monitors strips and finger
sticks might all become a thing of the past with
an implanted blood glucose monitor that provides
a continuous reading.
People with type 1 diabetes have to
constantly check their blood sugar levels, a
chore that involves finger pricks and test
strips and a special meter. That might all
become a thing of the past with an implanted
blood glucose monitor that provides a continuous
reading.
Moreover, people using such a device have
significantly fewer episodes of high or
excessively low blood glucose levels (that is,
hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia), physicians
report in the medical journal Diabetes Care.
Although intensive diabetes control is
associated with better outcomes, it is also
linked to more frequent episodes of
hypoglycemia, Dr. Satish K. Garg, at the
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in
Denver, and associates note. They theorized that
real-time continuous glucose readings would
increase the amount of time patients maintained
blood sugar levels in the normal range.
For their study, 15 patients with type 1
diabetes had DexCom glucose sensors implanted
under the skin of the abdomen.
The device is a sensor about the size of an
AA battery that transmits radio signals to a
pager-sized receiver. Glucose levels are
determined every 30 seconds, and data are
transmitted to the receiver every 5 minutes.
Vibratory and auditory alarms go off when
glucose levels are too high or too low.
During the first part of study period,
lasting about 50 days, blood glucose levels were
stored in the receiver, but were not made
available to physicians or patients. During a
second period, averaging 44 days, the receiver
displays were activated. Participants were asked
to monitor their blood glucose levels at least
twice daily with a traditional self-monitoring
device and whenever an alarm sounded.
During the second period, patients spent on
average 47 percent less time per day in the
hypoglycemic range and 25 percent less time in
the hyperglycemic range than they did during the
first phase of the study.
Garg's group suggests that infrequent
self-monitored blood glucose measurements fail
to provide patients with enough information to
avoid low blood sugar levels. They suggest that,
by decreasing high and low swings in the glucose
levels, continuous glucose readings may reduce
the long-term complications of diabetes.
Diabetes Care, March 2004.
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FACT: While
cardiovascular disease mortality and in particular
coronary heart disease related deaths have declined
in those without diabetes in developed countries,
in men with diabetes the decrease has been a
modest 13% while in women with diabetes the
rates have actually increased by 23%. IDF
2004
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