Painless patch for diabetes monitoring now being developed

May 24, 2022 - Wearable patch will send crucial readings to users' smartphones - By - Researchers are developing a tiny, painless, wearable patch for people with type 1 diabetes which will send crucial readings to their smartphones. The new project, funded by the JDRF (formerly known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), involves the use of hundreds of tiny microneedles to sense glucose and ketone levels. The research team is aiming to bring a product to market within the next few years to provide continuous, non-invasive monitoring to improve health and eliminate painful, inconvenient finger pricks. "Patients won't have to be constantly conscious of taking measurements," said Mahla Poudineh , an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Waterloo who leads the project. "This device will do it for them." Although continuous monitoring devices for glucose have been available for several years, people with type 1 diabetes must still take blood samples via finger pricks or use urine testing strips to determine their ketone bodies levels. High ketone levels are the cause of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a serious and potentially fatal problem that occurs when the body starts breaking down fat at a rate that is much too fast due to a lack of insulin. The liver processes the fat into a fuel called ketones, which in excess can cause the blood to become acidic, triggering a range of possible complications, including diabetic coma, stroke, heart attack, blindness and death.