Review of emerging approaches in non- or minimally invasive glucose monitoring and their application to physiological human body fluids

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus, commonly referred to as diabetes, is a serious disease in which the body doesn’t produce or properly use insulin so there are high blood sugar levels over a prolonged period which represents one of the major health problems in society and a chronic disease that requires long-term medical attention [1]. Often, diabetes can lead to many serious medical problems. These include blindness, kidney disease, nervous & circulatory system disease, limb amputations, stroke and cardiovascular disease (CVD) [2,3]. According to data from the 2017 National Diabetes Statistics Report, an estimated 30.3 million children and adults in the United States including 7.2 million undiagnosed people 9.5 percent of the U.S. population in 2011 have diabetes and the estimated cost of diabetes-related health care in the United States is risen to approximately $245 billion annually in 2012 from $174 billion in 2007, including $68.6 billion in direct medical costs [4,5]. Diabetes is a disproportionately expensive disease; in the United States in 2012, the individual cost of health care was $13,700 for people with diabetes, while about $7,900 of this amount was attributed to diabetes [5]. The recent multi-center NIH studies have indicated that the health risks associated with diabetes are significantly reduced when the blood glucose levels are well and frequently controlled, indicating that it is prudent to measure the blood glucose as often as five or six times a day. Thus it is very important that proper monitoring be done by diabetics at home or at work [6]. At present all existing methods of home blood glucose monitoring require drawing a blood sample by piercing the skin (typically, on the finger). This method strongly discourages a patients’ compliance and has the serious drawbacks because the procedure is invasive.