Ultrasound may be used in the future to sample blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes. Dr Joseph Kost (department of chemical engineering, Ben-Gurion university, Israel) and colleagues applied a single, short application of ultrasound to the forearm of volunteers with type I diabetes, the aim being to make the skin permeable, allowing glucose to cross it and be measured. They compared the glucose reading obtained with that from a blood sample from the patient's other forearm. They found that non-invasively extracted glucose levels showed close correlation with those from venous blood samples. In addition, one application of ultrasound rendered the skin sufficiently permeable to allow sampling of glucose over several hours.
A hand-held device could be developed that might allow continuous or intermittent monitoring of glucose levels, the researchers say. Eventually both monitoring and dosing could be incorporated into one device "in which the delivery of drug (for example, insulin) is modulated in response to physiological requirements", they conclude (Nature Medicine 2000;6:347).