The world’s first needle-free diabetes test

People with diabetes either don’t produce enough insulin or their bodies don’t know how to use the insulin they do produce. 

Having chronically high blood-sugar levels can cause health problems, so people treat their diabetes by injecting insulin when levels get high — but to know when that’s happening, they have to test their blood using a painful needle prick multiple times a day.

An estimated 30% of people with diabetes experience anxiety over the finger-prick process. That anxiety has been connected to testing avoidance — and if people aren’t testing their blood glucose levels when they should be, they might not be properly managing their disease.

Researchers have developed a needle-free diabetes test that measures glucose levels from saliva — not blood. It could be ready for consumers as soon as 2023.

It’s a thin sensor about the size of a stick of gum. When a person licks the sensor, a coating on it interacts with their saliva. That reaction creates an electrical current that can be measured to reveal their body’s glucose levels on a smartphone app.

The concentrations of glucose in saliva are much smaller than in blood, so developing a diabetes test that could accurately measure them wasn’t easy, but the sensor is reportedly accurate.

To see the biosensor on shelves, changing lives will be immensely satisfying.