Brown University scientists have created a new sensor that successfully uses artificial saliva to test its efficacy in measuring sugar concentration. The new sensor consists of a light source, metal and a special enzyme that changes color when exposed to blood sugar.
As everyone knows, diabetic patients need to prick blood through their fingers to check blood sugar, and need to repeat many times a day. Therefore, researchers are looking for another possibility to test blood glucose, and found that saliva is another body fluid that can be used to measure blood glucose.
However, the sensor cannot be widely used at present, because the FDA approval process will take a long time. We must confirm how this device can be accurately used to detect human blood glucose, especially for those patients who eat and drink, because these patients' saliva contains a large amount of substances, which is likely to pollute the test samples and affect the test results.
The results were published in the journal nanophotonics. The new sensor adopts a light source and a metal surface, in which the metal surface can interfere with the direction of light hitting (contacting) the sample, and the light "reads" how the specific enzyme reacts to the sugar in saliva to measure the concentration of sugar in the sample.
The researchers tested the sensor with artificial saliva to see how it works (artificial saliva has no potential mixture in actual saliva, such as food or drinks in the mouth that can change the test results). The results show that the sensor can detect blood glucose level with good accuracy.
Palmore said the next step is to make the device portable. It also needs to use real saliva to test the sensor and find cheap light sources. In addition, before testing saliva samples, some kind of flushing agent is needed to wash the tester's mouth. For example, mouthwashes can remove residual food in the mouth or other pollutants that may affect blood glucose readings.