Biosensor equipped Glasses to monitor diabetes through tears
Diabetes is a common disorder that affects around 380 million people across the world. Diabetes requires continuous monitoring that makes the disease complicated and difficult for the patients.
Diabetes Patients had been using a portable glycosometer to measure the blood glucose levels till now. Patients had to prick their fingers to get their blood samples.
But this is going to change with the help of technology.
No matter how tiny it is, pricking the fingers with a needle is uncomfortable for most of us. It is not only painful but prone to infections also.
Brazilian and American scientists have designed a new glucose oxidase biosensor that can monitor the patient’s blood glucose level through tears. This newly developed biosensor is painless as well as safe to use.
Scientists equipped the glasses with these biosensors to monitor diabetes in such a way that whenever the patient produces tears, it will come in contact with the biosensor.
As the tears come into contact with the glucose oxidase biosensor, it alters the flow of electrons and generates a signal that is transferred to a device installed in the arm of glasses. The signals are immediately sent
to a computer.Laís Canniatti Brazaca, one of the authors of study and researcher at the São Carlos Chemistry Institute, shared the underlying facts of this innovation. Various metabolite concentrations in tears are the reflection of respective levels in the blood. This makes the tears a noninvasive medium for measuring physiological parameters.
The device can also be used for monitoring alcohol, vitamin concentrations in the blood, and other degenerative diseases.
The device is not yet ready to introduce to the market. Cleverton Pirich, a biochemist at Paraná Federal University, Brazil told that even though the advantages of biosensors are many, more work is required to make then genuinely effective, safe and manufacture on large scale
Author : Namitha Thampi
