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Diabetic children exhale higher levels of a chemical
when their blood sugar is too high, US researchers said, suggesting
that a simple breath test could one day replace finger stick
testing as a way to monitor diabetes. Using a chemical
analysis method devised for air pollution testing, researchers at
the University of California, Irvine, found children with type 1
diabetes exhale much higher levels of methyl nitrates when their
blood sugar is too high. Type 1 diabetes is the most common form of
diabetes in children. It occurs when the immune system goes haywire
and starts attacking insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. People
with type 1 diabetes must monitor their blood sugar levels
frequently using devices that pierce the skin to extract a small
quantity of blood.
“It’s invasive. It’s painful and it can be
expensive,” said Dr Pietro Galassetti, a diabetes researcher at
University of California, Irvine. “What we are trying to do here is
to come up with something completely noninvasive.” Galassetti said
he believes it may be possible to develop a breath analysis test to
monitor blood sugar. He and colleagues tested the breath of 10
children with type 1 diabetes. They took air samples while blood
sugar levels were high, and continued to take samples as blood sugar
levels fell in response to insulin. Chemists then examined these
samples and found methyl nitrate was as much as 10 times higher than
normal.
They cross-checked these gas readings with blood
tests, which showed a correlation between high blood sugar and high
levels of methyl nitrate. While a promising idea, Galassetti said
more study is needed before the information is used to support a
breath test. “This is not a silver bullet,” he said in a telephone
interview. “The same correlation may not apply to all situations
when the sugar is high.” The study was supported by the National
Institutes of Health and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. It was
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. At
least 194 million people worldwide have diabetes, and the World
Health Organisation expects that number to rise to more than 300
million by 2025. Most of these people have type 2 diabetes, which is
linked to a poor diet and lack of exercise. If blood sugar levels
are too high, people with type 1 diabetes must inject insulin to
bring them down these damaging glucose levels.
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