Could this technology mean the end of traditional glucose monitors?

University of Texas at Arlington recently posed the question ‘what if a diabetic never had to prick a finger to monitor his or her blood-glucose levels and instead could rely on an internal, nanoscale device to analyse blood continuously and transmit readings to a hand-held scanner?’

That could apparently, be the future for diabetics thanks to the technology being developed by Kyungsuk Yum, assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Backed by a $100,000 grant, Yum has created an injectable, near-infrared optical biosensor nanotube that can read someone’s blood glucose constantly while an optical glucose scanner can access the data collected by nanotube.

“Continuous blood glucose monitoring is essential in every diabetic’s life,” Yum said. “This device could unlock continuous information vital to a diabetic’s quality of life.”

According to estimates by the American Diabetes Association more than 29 million people live with diabetes in the United States. That’s nearly 10% of the population. According to the World Health Organization, about 371 million worldwide have the disease.

Yum’s work in this field came about through his desire to help people with diabetes.

On the University of Texas at Arlington website he said: “It is a huge societal problem…I believe this nanotube sensing technology has that potential and could potentially provide a better way to manage diabetes and improve the quality of life for people with diabetes.”

Early research on single-walled carbon nanotube-based optical biosensing technology was published in Nature Nanotechnology, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie and ACS Nano.

Current diabetes technology offers patients two options. One requires a tube to be inserted through the abdomen for use with a continuous glucose monitoring system. The more common method requires a finger prick that provides blood for an external system called a glucometer.

As the sensor system reads glucose levels in the patient’s tissue, this can be seen as a drawback as it isn’t as accurate as a blood reading. The continuous glucose-monitoring sensor also needs to be calibrated multiple times a day and changed every five to seven days. The drawback to the glucometer is that it requires painful finger pricks throughout the day.

Khosrow Behbehani, dean of the UTA College of Engineering, said Yum’s work is representative of biomedical innovation that will improve health and the human condition: “It’s compelling work that could improve the way diabetics live every day,” Behbehani said. “When research touches lives in such a way, it can dramatically affect the health care of millions of people.”