Non-invasive blood glucose monitor as good as finger prick test

Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have undertaken a study to evaluate the effectiveness of MIT’s non-invasive Raman spectroscopy technology that monitors blood glucose levels. To evaluate the amount of glucose that remains in the blood, and if a patient’s insulin-regulating mechanisms are working effectively, they measured the blood glucose levels of 20 healthy, non-diabetic adults before they drank a glucose drink, and then intermittently measured the levels over a period just under 3 hours using finger prick, spectroscopy, and IV blood test. The result was that spectroscopy predicted glucose values just as reliably as the finger prick test.

How does it work? MIT said: “The device uses Raman spectroscopy to measure the chemical composition of skin and extract the amount of glucose out of other skin compartments. A fibre 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.”

Jeon Woong Kang, PhD, research scientist with MIT’s Laser Biomedical Research Centre and also co-author of the study, said: “This is a technology that we have been pioneering for more than 20 years. We know that handheld skin prick tests are not always accurate and may be uncomfortable for patients. 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 non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring sensor.”