Contact Lens May Aid Blood Sugar Management

People suffering from diabetes must closely monitor their blood sugar, multiple times throughout the day.

The current monitoring process involves pricking a finger and testing a drop of blood for current blood sugar (glucose) levels.

As you can imagine, this monitoring can become tiresome, and will leave diabetics with sore fingers.

A new contact lens could change all that.

This new contact lens, being developed by Sanford Asher, Ph.D., at the University of Pittsburgh, will sense the sugar levels in tear fluid. The color of the contact lens will change as sugar levels rise.

Instead of finger pricks, diabetics would just need to look at themselves in a mirror to determine their current blood sugar levels.

The contact lenses are still under development, but Dr. Asher expects that these glucose-sensing lenses will be available for human trials within the year.

Such an advance would mean a significant life improvement for the more than 21 million Americans who suffer from diabetes.