Monitor Reads Glucose Level in Eye

A non-invasive device is being developed that monitors glucose levels from the white of the eye. It works by bouncing a harmless beam of mid-infrared (IR) radiation off the conjunctiva; the light reflected back is proportional to the amount of glucose in the blood.

Diabetes is a metabolic disease that can affect nearly every organ in the body. People with diabetes cannot control their blood sugars without proper treatment, including diet and exercise, oral medications, and/or insulin injections. With proper treatment, diabetics can avoid complications such as blindness, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease. Currently patients need to measure their blood glucose from blood obtained by pricking a finger.

Glucose has a strong absorbance of mid-infrared (IR) radiation. The spectrum of light in the probe being developed is invisible and has the right wavelength to interact with glucose molecules in blood flowing through the tiny vessels in the thin membrane covering the eye. According to John Burd, CEO of Oculir (San Diego, CA, USA), the company developing the new painless device, "The more glucose in blood, the less signal at specific wavelengths is reflected back. This gives a noninvasive measure of blood glucose levels.” Most other noninvasive systems being developed have attempted to use near-IR radiation on the skin, where the near-IR signal is complex and variable.

The product will be a device about the size of a cell phone that patients simply hold up to their eye, allowing IR radiation technology to test glucose levels. John Burd observed that there are no potential health risks whatsoever associated with this technology: We all give off mid-IR radiation as heat. We have done a very small number of human studies with our research instrumentation and the results are very encouraging. We are now getting ready to run larger human trials and are working on the commercial unit.

In addition to measuring glucose in people with diabetes, the device, with modifications, can measure a variety of medical, military, and industrial analytes. The commercial version of the device is expected to be available in the year 2009.



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