"There are parents with diabetic children who spend their nights worrying that their child in a nearby bedroom may go into nocturnal hypoglycemia," said Gough, who explained that the glucose sensors could be used to send information to a phone that would alert parents if the child's glucose levels drop to a dangerous level during the night.

"Four finger sticks per day to measure glucose levels is the current standard of care, but blood glucose can go on significant excursions between sticks," said Gough. In contrast, the long-term implanted glucose monitor would provide continuous monitoring day and night. "We are moving toward something that will be automatic and quite unobtrusive. Others wouldn't even know if someone is using a glucose sensor. Our goal is to get people off the finger stick cycle," said Gough.

Insulin Pumps

Today, there are approximately 800,000 people using external insulin pumps. Currently, these insulin pumps are open loop - meaning they are not connected to a glucose sensor directly, and they have to be programmed by a physician. "You can manually adjust the pump schedule to some extent, but patients must keep rigid schedules to live with an insulin pump," said Gough.

The bioengineers- goal is to enable the pumps to automatically adjust the rate of insulin being administered based on glucose readings from the implanted sensors, that is, to function like an artificial pancreatic beta cell. "If insulin pumps were programmed based on near-real-time readings from implanted glucose sensors, the pumps would adjust insulin dosing based on what your glucose number is after a meal. You wouldn't have to be so rigorous about your schedule," said Gough.

"With an insulin pump, there is always the concern that it will pump too much insulin, leading to dangerously low blood glucose levels. The sensor could serve as a safety mechanism against low blood glucose levels," said Gough, who noted that major research efforts to use readings from glucose sensors to program insulin pumps are well underway. Researchers are primarily using needle-type glucose sensors, but these needle sensors could be replaced with the new implanted sensors if and when they are approved for human use.

Source: University of California - San Diego