Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
It’s nice to say goodbye to the pricks in your life, particularly when you’re a diabetic and those pricks are physically painful.
Now, thanks to researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Department of Nanoengineering, pricking any may be out of the picture completely.
UCSD nanoengineering professor Joseph Wang and his colleagues have developed an ultra-thin, flexible device that sticks to the skin like a rub-on tattoo and can non-invasively measure blood-glucose levels. The sensor, which is described in a proof-of-concept study published recently in the journal Analytical Chemistry, could make finger-pricks a thing of the past.
“The sensor represents the first example of an easy-to-wear flexible tattoo-based epidermal diagnostic device combining reverse iontophoretic extraction of interstitial glucose and an enzyme-based amperometric biosensor,” the researchers wrote. “In-vitro studies reveal the tattoo sensor’s linear response toward physiologically relevant glucose levels with negligible interferences from common coexisting electroactive species.”
“The iontophoretic-biosensing tattoo platform is reduced to practice by applying the device on human subjects and monitoring variations in glycemic levels due to food consumption,” they continued, adding that their findings indicate that the device “holds considerable promise for efficient diabetes management and can be extended toward noninvasive monitoring of other physiologically relevant analytes present in the interstitial fluid.”
In other words, the device is a wearable and non-irritating way to detect glucose in the fluid just underneath the skin through a combination of glucose excretion and electrochemical biosensing technology. Preliminary tests involving seven healthy volunteers showed that the unit was able to accurate determine their sugar levels, and the researchers believe that the device could also be used not just to help manage diabetes, but for other conditions, including kidney disease.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world live with diabetes, Wang and his colleagues said, and a large percentage of them are under instructions to keep close tabs on their blood sugar levels. However, since the standard method of checking glucose requires a prick to the finger in order to draw blood for testing, the technique can discourage people from doing to.
Recently, a glucose sensing wristband had been introduced to patients, but the device wound up being discontinued after causing skin irritation to patients. Wang’s team set out to find a different was to track blood sugar without the pain caused by finger pricks, which is what served as the inspiration for their new non-invasive, tattoo-inspired device.
Back in 2007, a team of researchers from the Dwight Look College of Engineering tested a similar tattoo-inspired device that used fluorescent polymer microbeads implanted just under a patient’s skin. The amount of light emitted by the beads when they were exposed to laser light changed based on glucose levels, and the readings were measured using a watch-like monitor.
When injected under the skin, the microbeads were prevented from entering cells – unlike tattooing, in which cells absorb the pigment. The beads remained in the interstitial spaces between cells, which are filled with water in glucose molecules, and the glucose in the fluids there bind to the microbeads, causing the color to change based on the amount present.
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