A Temporary Tattoo to Measure Blood Sugar
I suppose, a great part of humanity agrees that any needle-related treatment isn't the most pleasant (moreover, when you need to get some blood from the fingertip multiple times per day). But avoiding this procedure threatens a diabetes patient with serious medical complications.
Nanoengineering continues amazing us with different kinds of scientific discoveries. As a persistent measuring of blood sugar is supreme for diabetes patients, Amay Bandodkar, a researcher from the University of California, San Diego, has developed a painless flexible sensor tattoo which uses a subtle electrical current to monitor a glucose level in a human body. He is working with electrical and computer engineering researchers in the Center for Wearable Sensors.
"Presently the tattoo sensor can easily survive for a day. These are extremely inexpensive — a few cents — and hence can be replaced without much financial burden on the patient," Bandodkar said in a statement.
The device - which consists of carefully patterned electrodes printed on temporary tattoo paper - has already been tested on several healthy volunteers who measured the blood sugar level before and after gulping down a sandwich and a glass of soda. The instrument is going to send the received information to the physician's device via Bluetooth.
Now, the developers are worried about the ways to make the tattoo serve longer (currently it works only a day) without increasing the price. The most perfect and expected experiment result for researches is to reveal not only good components but also alcohol or drugs.
