Researchers hope to make needle pricks for diabetics a thing of the past
Patients with diabetes have to test their blood sugar levels several times a day to make sure they are not getting too high or too low. Studies have shown that more than half of patients don’t test often enough, in part because of the pain and inconvenience of the needle prick. One possible alternative is Raman spectroscopy, a noninvasive technique that reveals the chemical composition of tissue, such as skin, by shining near-infrared light on it. MIT scientists have now taken an important step toward making this technique practical for patient use: They have shown that they can use it to directly measure glucose concentrations through the skin. Until now, glucose levels had to be calculated indirectly, based on a comparison between Raman signals and a reference measurement of blood glucose levels. While more work is needed to develop the technology into a user-friendly device, this advance shows that a Raman-based sensor...