August 8, 2011

Implantable “Hydrogel” sensor might soon measure your blood glucose levels

by ruchi

A research group in Japan is working on an alternate means to measure blood glucose levels which will largely benefit people with diabetes. It’s a sensor that needs to be implanted in the body and its color changes owing to the level of sugar in the blood. They first tested the sensor in a mouse’s ear and it was based on the “Hydrogel” substance developed by the research group. They took a fiber-shaped Hydrogel for stability and placed it in the mouse for as much as four months. Obviously this will only be a relative means of measuring blood glucose level.

Given the kind of effort that goes in to actually plant one of this inside the body of a rodent and that too for relative readings, I think there are already tons of gadgets for domestic use which do a fairly good job. Anyway, the researchers say that a lot of problems need to be solved before a fiber-shaped sensor can actually be implanted in human bodies.


[Techon]