Technology in Development to Ease Diabetes Glucose Testing

(National Institutes of Health

A team of engineers and clinicians in Arizona are developing a new device for diabetics that can make glucose testing easier and less painful. The technology involves taking samples of tear fluid rather than blood, and results from a joint project of engineering faculty from Arizona State University in Tempe and clinicians at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

Diabetes affects nearly 26 million Americans, about 8 percent of the population. It is a leading cause of kidney failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults, a major cause of heart disease and stroke, and 7th leading cause of death in the U.S.

People with diabetes need to monitor their glucose levels, which requires taking small blood samples, several times a day. Puncturing of the skin, usually on their fingers (pictured right), to take blood samples is difficult and painful for many patients.

A new sensor developed by the team would enable people to draw tear fluid from their eyes to get a glucose-level test sample. The researchers say glucose in tear fluid may give a glucose level reading in the blood as accurately as a test using a blood sample. Early research findings were published last year in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology (paid subscription required).

While the blood-based tests provide accurate results, the process of taking the blood sample gives many patients pause. The less invasive step of dabbing tear fluid would remove pain from the testing process.

Because of its potential impact on health care, the technology has drawn interest from BioAccel, a Phoenix, Arizona nonprofit that helps bring new biomedical technologies to the marketplace. BioAccel has provided funding for the team to validate the technology through proof-of-concept testing. Those tests would aim to show the correlation between glucose tests with the new tear fluid device and traditional blood-sample monitors.

Read More: Paper Strip Technique Devised for Complex Diagnostics

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