DIABETES

Can sweat patches revolutionise diabetes?

Scientists have developed a sensor that can control our blood sugar levels by the analysing of sweaty skin. This sensor needs just one millionth of a litre of sweat to do the test.

A South Korean team said the sensor was accurate and they trully think it could help patients with diabetes.

The sensor is flexible and can move with the skin. But scientists needed to overcome a series of challenges to make it worth.

Firstly, there is less sugar in sweat than in blood, so it's harder to find and, secondly, there are other chemicals in sweat which can disrupt the results, as lactic acid.

So the patch has three sensors for monitoring the sugar levels, four sensors which controls the acidity of the sweat and a humidity sensor for analysing the amount of sweat.

All this information recollected by the sensor is passed onto a portable computer which does the analysis.

Scientists conclude saying this new sistem provide important advances for diabetes but they want to test how the patches work in the long-term.

All patients with diabetes deserve this method because the other one is too painful and dangerous. In blood there are a lot of illnesses and there are easy to propagate. This future method will be more safe and easy to use.