Doctors recommend that diabetics who take insulin check their blood glucose levels four times a day. But piercing a nerve-rich fingertip and squeezing out a drop of blood onto a test strip is painful, and often deters people from checking any more than just once. Frequent testing allows insulin-dependent diabetics to tightly control their blood glucose levels and gives them the best chance of preventing major complications of diabetes, such as vision loss from retinopathy, non-traumatic amputations or kidney disease.

"Non invasive, or even less invasive, options for monitoring blood glucose would likely result in better compliance with our four-times-a-day testing recommendation," said Robert Gabbay, M.D., Ph.D., director of the diabetes program and associate professor, Penn State College of Medicine. "Better monitoring means patients could keep their blood glucose at the levels necessary to ward off complications."

Gabbay conducted a review of new developments in glucose monitoring technology both for patient comfort and for their potential to improve patient outcomes. The article appeared in the Sept. 15 issue of Canadian Journal of Diabetes.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body doesn't make enough insulin, or isn't able to appropriately use the insulin produced by the body. Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood. High levels of glucose in the blood can seriously affect other body systems, particularly over time. The most common and, to date, the most inexpensive way to monitor blood glucose is by piercing the finger with a small needle and squeezing a drop of blood onto a test strip. The test strip is fixed to a small monitor, which measures the blood glucose.

For this review, Gabbay divided the newest monitoring technologies into three categories: noncontinuous and minimally invasive; continuous but invasive; and continuous and noninvasive.

Noncontinuous and minimally invasive: Seve
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Contact: Valerie Gliem
vgliem@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State
15-Sep-2003

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