GlucoTear

Glucose levels are important for diagnosis and monitoring for diabetic patients. However, drawing blood and sending it for plasma testing takes some time. Home tests include Glucometers, but they are often found inaccurate. They also need finger pricking, which although is almost painless, may cause some discomfort. Also for someone who has to monitor blood glucose levels regularly, it means he/she has to regularly prick the fingers for a drop of blood. This idea does away with the requirement of blood altogether. It has been found that for highly diabetic patients, glucose is present in tears, and this tear glucose can be related to the glucose level in blood of a subject.

The idea is to produce a micro-fluidic device which would take in tear sample drawn from a patient. The sample will preferably undergo an enzymatic reaction inside the chip. This will result in the production of a light red/pinkish coloured dye whose optical density will be proportional to the glucose concentration in the sample. The concentration of glucose can be found out using a colorimetric way and this concentration can be related to as a function of blood glucose of the subjects.