Scientists belonging to Australia have claimed that they have developed pain-free blood sugar testing for diabetics, a non-invasive strip that checks glucose levels via saliva.
For diabetics, managing their blood sugar levels typically means pricking their fingers multiple times a day with a lancet and then placing a drop of blood on a testing strip. Understandably, some diabetes sufferers avoid the painful process by minimising their tests.
Nevertheless, this latest test works by embedding an enzyme that detects glucose into a transistor that can then transmit the presence of glucose, Paul Dastoor, professor of physics at the University of Newcastle in Australia said. Paul Dastoor led the team that created it.
He said the tests create the prospect of pain-free, low-cost glucose testing which should lead to much better outcomes for diabetes sufferers.
People’s saliva has glucose in it and that glucose concentration follows your blood glucose. But it is a concentration about 100 times lower which means that we had to develop a test that is low cost, easy to manufacture, but that has sensitivity about 100 times higher than standard glucose blood test.
