I’ve never been a big fan of the needle-in-the-arm inoculation, but it never really bothers me. Likewise, I never have had a problem donating blood or giving a sample to the lab. But when it comes to that simple pricking of the finger for certain blood tests, that’s where we get into uncomfortable territory.
It’s not that I feel some intense pain; it’s just a slightly unpleasant experience for me. A few times I’ve had the health professional take a sample from my ear lobe, but that wasn’t a great improvement. Through the years, I have had a special kinship with diabetics, who have had to experience daily needle-pricking for their lifetimes. And whenever I hear about a breakthrough in the blood-testing process for them, I am very happy.
This week, in reading an ACS PressPac item about the subject, I was overjoyed.
Scientists are reporting development and successful laboratory testing of an electrochemical sensor device that has the potential to measure blood sugar levels from tears instead of blood — an advance that could save the world’s 350 million diabetes patients the discomfort of pricking their fingers for droplets of blood used in traditional blood sugar tests. Their report appears in ACS’ journal Analytical Chemistry.
Mark Meyerhoff and colleagues explain that about 5 percent of the world’s population (and about 26 million people in the U.S. alone) have diabetes. The disease is a fast-growing public health problem because of a sharp global increase in obesity, which makes people susceptible to developing type 2 diabetes. People with diabetes must monitor their blood glucose levels several times a day to make sure they are within a safe range.
Current handheld glucose meters require a drop of blood, which patients draw by pricking their fingers with a small pin or lancet. However, some patients regard that pinprick as painful enough to discourage regular testing. That’s why Meyerhoff’s team is working to develop a new, pain-free device that can use tear glucose levels as an accurate reflection of blood sugar levels.
Tests of their approach in laboratory rabbits, used as surrogates for humans in such experiments, showed that levels of glucose in tears track the amounts of glucose in the blood. “Thus, it may be possible to measure tear glucose levels multiple times per day to monitor blood glucose changes without the potential pain from the repeated invasive blood drawing method,” say the researchers.
Image: iStock
Add Comment
Subscribe to Comments
Log In 
