Abbott Laboratories and U.S. regulators said on Wednesday that the company is recalling about 359 million blood glucose testing strips that could give false results to diabetics.
Abbott said the strips should not be used and would be replaced at no cost.
The company said it found the problem during a routine internal review, which discovered that certain lots of the strips took too long to absorb the blood from a patient’s finger.
Abbott said in a statement that the faulty strips could cause patients to try to boost their blood sugar unnecessarily.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a separate statement that it was working with Abbott on the recall.
The FDA said that affected strips were made between January and May and sold both to consumers and healthcare facilities. It added that heat exposure or prolonged storage of the strips could also be an issue.
Abbott said ReliOn Ultima test strips are used with the ReliOn Ultima blood glucose monitoring system.
The company said that the monitoring systems themselves are not affected by the recall.
The strips are also used with its Precision Xtra, Precision Xceed Pro, MediSense Optium, Optium and Optium EZ.
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