The daily sugar-level testing that diabetics have to perform every day is not made any easier by the pain that goes with the prick of the needle. A graduate student in California has come up with a new bloodless detection device that is painless and allows the glucose to be checked as many times as needed each day, without the need to draw blood.

The graduate student is Amay Bandodkar, and she is working with her colleagues at the Nano Engineering Department and the Center for Wearable Sensors. This department is part of the Jacobs School of Engineering, which is at the University of California in San Diego.

The device consists of electrodes that are printed on tattoo paper. A small voltage is then applied to the skin for about 10 minutes, which pulls fluid from it, allowing the device to measure the level of sugar through a sugar-specific enzyme.

The new glucose testing device has already been tested, and the results of those tests have been published in Analytical Chemistry. It was tested on those with and without diabetes and was found to be as accurate as a traditional meter.

So far, there is no meter that can provide the user with a numerical read-out. This is being developed. The team hopes to produce a reader that uses Bluetooth so that it can transmit the numbers directly to the doctor or to the cloud for data storage.

Another obstacle that must be overcome before this product becomes marketable is that the electrodes only last a day. The good thing is that they only cost a few pennies to make right now, which is much cheaper than the typical dollar or more per test strip diabetics are now paying.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that there are about 29.1 million people in the United States who have been diagnosed with diabetes. They also indicate that there are millions more who have not been diagnosed, but probably have the disease.

Low cost diabetic test strips are essential to helping many diabetics control their sugar levels effectively. Some need to perform these tests multiple times per day in order to stay healthier and live longer. Diabetes is controlled through medications and self-monitoring and knowing what to do based on the readings from their test strips.

Without being able to measure their sugar levels, diabetics do not know how much they can or cannot eat per meal, because they need to know how to adjust it each time. Many health problems can be caused from diabetes, and even death, if the blood sugar levels are not regulated. This new bloodless detection device could be just what is needed for better and cheaper control.