Issue 134 Item 2 Wave Goodbye to Finger Sticks?

Painless Ways for Diabetics to Measure Blood Sugar! Instead of dreaded, painful finger sticks done several times a day, people with diabetes may someday be able to accurately monitor their blood sugar levels as easily as taking their temperature.

They may employ infrared light waves and computers instead of needles and blood glucose meters by means of cutting-edge technology that uses the same principals of ultrasound but with better resolution.

The first trials of these experimental techniques suggest there may be new, painless, and noninvasive ways to accurately keep tabs on blood sugar levels, according to two studies in the December issue of Diabetes Care, a medical journal published by the American Diabetes Association.

In one study, a prototype of a new device estimated blood sugar "with clinically acceptable accuracy," says lead researcher Carl Malchoff, MD, of the University of Connecticut Health Center.

The handheld device performs like an ear thermometer by measuring the body’s infrared heat emissions. Dr. Malchoff stated that, "You just place it against the eardrum for about 10 or 15 seconds to measure blood glucose levels." "In fact, it basically is an ear thermometer like you would buy over-the-counter."

Besides the handheld model, which is about the size of a cell phone, Janusz Buchert, PhD, inventor of the device and president of Infratec Inc., said that he hopes to raise enough money to develop another prototype that could provide continuous blood sugar monitoring. "This would be worn like a hearing aid and could be connected to an implanted insulin pump," he says.

In the first independent clinical study of this noninvasive blood glucose prototype based on thermal emission in the mid-infrared spectral region has demonstrated glucose measurements with clinically acceptable accuracy but without the necessity of individual daily calibration. Diabetes Care 25:2268-2275, 2002