Latest news on type 1 diabetes

Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently evaluated the accuracy of an MIT-developed technology to monitor blood glucose levels without needles or a finger prick.

Early results latest news on type 1 diabetes that the noninvasive technology measures blood glucose levels as effectively as a finger prick test—without drawing blood.

The study, "Evaluation of accuracy dependence of Raman spectroscopic models on the ratio of calibration and validation points for non-invasive glucose sensing," measured the blood glucose levels of 20 healthy, non-diabetic adults prior to drinking a glucose-rich beverage. Blood glucose levels were then measured in intervals over the next minutes using three methods: spectroscopy, IV blood test, and finger prick.

At the opening, Minister Katalin Novák emphasized that the government is trying to give all support to the families of children with diabetes so that they can live a full life. Of these, the most up-to-date technical devices, insulin pumps and sensors for measuring tissue sugar levels are already available in Hungary with 98 percent state support for type 1 diabetic children and 80 percent for adults with state support, the Minister without Portfolio at a Thursday event. In his greeting, the President of the UD Clinical Center spoke about the fact that the Department of Pediatrics of the University of Debrecen has become the leading institution in the field in the whole region thanks to the outstanding professional work of the past years and decades. Zoltán Szabó added: everything is being done to ensure that child emergency care in Debrecen can develop latest news on type 1 diabetes a short time. Of course, we also monitor the fate of children with metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, and try to do everything we can to make significant progress in this area as well, the professor stressed.

The tests are designed to determine how much glucose remains in the blood and if a patient's insulin-regulating mechanisms are working effectively. The researchers found that spectroscopy predicted glucose values as accurately as a finger prick test.

The approach we studied is noninvasive and uses a laser to monitor glucose levels in the skin," said Anandhi Upendran, Ph. A fiber optic cable attached to a wristband passes laser light onto the skin to detect different components in the skin, such as fat tissue, protein, collagen and glucose molecules. The shifts in wavelengths associated with glucose present in the blood create a sort of molecular fingerprint that can be used to determine glucose levels.

The gold standard is intravenous blood testing, but frequent blood draws may not be an option for many patients. We were pleased to find that our initial results show Raman spectroscopy can measure glucose levels that are comparable to the finger stick devices.

We hope that we can refine this method to be a noninvasive continuous glucose monitoring sensor. Future studies will examine the accuracy of the technology in patients with diabetes.

Find more information on the study here.