Slashdot Mirror
Tattoo To Monitor Diabetes
infonography notes that the "BBC is reporting about using tattoos to monitor the state of a diabetics' health. While TV's the Invisible Man series had this, this is actually real. Designed by Gerard Cote, of Texas A&M University they are made of polyethylene glycol beads that are coated with fluorescent molecules. Likely this will start to change the attitudes of parents who have been resisting the urging of their kids to get Tattoos."
Or, remembering a particularly traumatic experience when a friend went hypo, perhaps the words "fuck you" to save them the bother of saying them themselves (yes, I know a hypo diabetic is not in their right mind).
Rich
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
This sounds like a great idea, and I know many people (my grandfather included) who would prefer this to the finger pricking fun on a regular basis. However, it does raise a couple of questions.
1) How long would it last? Since it ISN'T absorbed into the cells, how long could the fluorescent dye, if you will, stay in the "interstitial fluid"? Would you need a new tattoo every month? year?
2) How much will it cost? The method doesn't really sound that expensive, except for the watch-like device. But will HMOs pay for it? Medicare?
3) How reliable is it? There are some diabetics who are very sensitive to sugar differences. Howa accurate can this be? Does it compare favorably with strips?
If this is actually working, I'd happily volunteer to be the first to use it... I think the advantage is not that it's pain-free. I couldn't care less about pricking me in the finger. The real problems with conventional systems are
Also, while devices for continuous measurement are out there, I don't expect them to be really comfortable, and I'd still depend on a device that I have to look after. So if this tattoo proves to be working, I'd be more than happy to use it.
Oh, and a question -- this polymer stuff reminds me of those materials used in modern hard-to-forge banknotes (see here for instance), is that a similar material?
It sounds like there's a lot of details left to be worked out, but if something like this could serve as a continuous blood glucose diagnostic, I'm so there. Having been an insulin dependent diabetic for the last 13 years or so, a continuous blood glucose monitor has really been the most important missing piece to the whole puzzle.
Sampling my blood sugar once or twice a day is far too infrequent to get a sense of how my blood sugar rises and falls over time. Having a monitor that could record my blood sugar levels even every five minutes would be fantastic. Make it able to sample every five seconds and hook it up to an insulin pump, and you've got as close to a cybernetic cure as one could hope for.
Being an insulin-dependent diabetic is like driving a manual transmission car.. very workable, but you have to do a lot more work, and you have to know what the engine and gears are doing. If it's still too early for a cure, having a really good tachometer would be the next best thing.
And having an intelligent cyber-tattoo would be just too cyber-punky for words. Sign me up.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I've been a type 1 (insulin dependant) diabetic for 19 years (since I was 3) and no matter what anyone tells you, it still hurts. You do get used to it, but it's pain I'd rather avoid, all the same.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
1) This would make it far easier for the patient's loved ones to measure their glucose levels. A mother would be able to check a child's glucose level in the middle of the night without waking him/her up. I can also imagine a coworker saying, "Dude, your glucose looks a little low - maybe you should go eat something." :)
2) Even without a bracelet or necklace identifying the patient as a diabetic, emergency personel could quickly see the patient's gluocose levels. If a diabetic is laying on the side of the road about to enter a coma, saving a few seconds could be critical.
Personally, I like (1) - it would be a huge quality of life improvement.
Perhaps the insulin injections could be changed to pill forms, etc, -if- the monitoring was more frequent (to the point of rediculous with the current tests).
Not saying it could or would, just thinking that a more active test could potentially lead to alternative treatments which are difficult, or useless in the current environment.
De plane, de plane boss!
I thought Tattoo was only good for monitoring incoming planes, now he can track diabetes?
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Or, even, tattoo it to your wrist and have a colour sensor in your watch that started bleeping if your sugar levels changed too much.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"Tattoo To Monitor Diabetes"
... uhh.. Shit. Can anybody think of a diabetes related word that rhymes with 'plane'?
Look boss! The
"Derp de derp."
As a professional tattoo artist, and a liscensed one to boot, I am regularly asked if I can/will do the new flourescent tattoos, and I always give the exact same answer. "NO!"
In 20 years, I may, but right now, while there have never been any long term tests to see if these tattoos will cause bodily harm, I refuse to put flourescent ink in anyone. There have been no tests to aprove the flourescent inks for permanent cosmetic use, so no one is certain that these inks are safe. Every bottle of ink in my shop comes with about 20 pages of paperwork documenting that the inks have passed years of medical testing, and have been found safe. The flourescent inks do not come with this paperwork, so I refuse stock those inks.
Think about it, things that glow usualy come with warnings saying not to ingest, that means it's not safe. When you put ink in your skin, it does the same thing as if you swallow it.
--Forest C. Adcock--
The obvious next step is to vary the type of material being used linearly across the tattoo itself, turning it into a "glucose meter".
As an interesting aside, could this method be used to produce tattoos that were more easily removable as well?
I think I would want this to be removable, particularly when stem cell research finally cures diabetes once and for all, and you are left with a legacy tattoo.
-- Terry
This really has great medical potential, but I can imagine similar developments of the future used for other purposes. Being able to monitor bodily chemicals could be extremely valuable, but also subject to unexpected uses.
As condition of your employment, you agree to a permanent tattoo that indicates drug use.
Or,
The court orders you to get a drug-monitoring tattoo and scan it by your home internet-connected device every 6 hours.
The biggest thing is not being able to have a continuous readout, but the pain and hassle is not to be ignored, either.
And you'd be amazed at how many test strips an insulin dependent diabetic can go through..
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I too am diabetic, or atleast I was from age 16 to 18. Some time in June of this year my pancreas started to produce insulin of it's own. While I know (as much as I may want it to be) this isn't permanent, I know that i wouldn't want a tattoo for life.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I remember reading a while back about a "needle" that was created using a process similar to etching computer chips. Basically, it consisted of numerous tiny needles in a grid (10,000 to a square inch or something), which reach deep enough into the skin to enter the capillary system, but not deep enough to trigger the nerves and register pain.
I thought this device would have great application in both glucose testing and medication delivery, but haven't heard anything abou it lately. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Then you, sir, are drunk. : )
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
I am a type one diabetic, who doesn't test levels any where near as much as I should. While I can clearly see that continuous blood glucose monitoring would be a god send, it's not quite what we need.
Now if we could combine continuous monitoring with an insulin delivery device, in such a way that the monitor controls the delivery, that would be pure heaven.
Imagine, insert an insulin and mabe a glucose cartridge every week or so, the monitor tells the device to deliver insulin when it detects a rise in glucose, and tells the device to deliver glucose when the glucose levels drop to hypoglycemic levels.
You could do anything you want, safe in the knowledge that your diabetes management device would keep your levels within not only safe, but healthy levels.
No more worrying if your late with dinner, or early with dinner - the glucose and insulin doses will even it out, want to go for a run, just go - the glucose will make up the shortfall if needed, want to veg out on the couch, by all means - the device wil just supply a little more insulin to cover your lazyness. It'd be like having a superislet (islet's are the cells that produce insulin for you non-diabetics).
I think the delivery is the easy bit, you could just strap a small device with a needle to your arm or something. The monitoring is the difficult bit, from what I know of the current continuous monitors they are neither accurate or infact particularly continuous.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
the pills people take today aren't really insulin... they just help your body use the insulin that you do produce, or coax more out of you. they only work for people who have relatively functional pancreases.
real oral insulin instead of insulin injections/pump would be a major breakthrough, and there is much work in the field. There seems to be some very promising work on this at Purdue, which may be related to the current Nobex clinical trials. Israeli researchers have a line on it, too. Shots may well soon be a thing of the past!
What would be even cooler would be to start seeing this technology, and "adaptive tattoos" in general made available to the general populace. The ability to have tattoos that change their appearance depending on physiological conditions would open up new worlds of expression. Anyone who's read Nylund's "Signal to Noise" will remember the character Panda's always-changing eyelid tattoos. Very cool.
My deviantArt site
Polyethelene Glycol is the major component of antifreeze, if I remember right...
Weren't we always told not to touchor drink the stuff as kids?
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
I've been hearing about thise glucowatch for the better part of 12 years now. I work in the glucose monitoring industry, and this story has been popular for years. Every recent mention of I have seen shows that the precision is still poor, and you still need to perform daily finger-stick tests to calibrate the watch, so if you're looking to get away from sticking your finger, the glucowatch won't solve your problems.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Islet cell transplants are reporting great success in Mexico, where teenagers with the cells transplanted into their bodies are able to live without any insulin injections.
For those that don't know, it's not the pancreas that creates insulin, it's tiny cells inside the pancreas called the Islets of Langerhans that produce insulin. These cells can be removed from recently deceased people, treated with a series of enzymes and other biochemicals to leave just the Islet cells which can be safely injected into a diabetic (usually into the liver) where they release insulin into the blood stream.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Or to the person when he/she has reached a mature age and has a stupid looking Pikachu tattooed on them?
Ah, but by then Pokemon will be retro chic - 30somethings at parties will discuss episodes religiously, and whether anyone remembers the time charmander whopped jigglypuff, and just how gay was James out of team rocket?
All crappy kids TV shows become a 30something cult, given time...
"Information wants to be paid"
...is that the benefits of a low-carb way of life would become more widely demonstrated, as would the idiocies of the low-fat fad.
In addition to the realization of just how much nutritional disinformation we are being fed by the popular media, we would see widespread consciousness-raising in regard to the deleterious effects of unnatural substances in our diets (sugar, grains, trans-fats, etc). The relative benefits of various types of exercise would be more readily apparent, and immediate feedback would encourage more healthy lifestyles.
There is already ample evidence that one of the major keys to a long and healthy life is the reduction of the amount of insulin your body needs (others include wearing seat belts, avoiding violent crime, getting ample sleep, avoiding environmental poisons, not taking gratuitous risks, not smoking, etc.).
One can only hope that some better way of doing this can be found. Since current bg monitoring is done by IR absorption/transmission, I would think that a small IR reflector could be implanted, perhaps just under an artery or vein in the arm near the skin's surface. Then a monitor could use this to directly read bg (perhaps with occasional calibration with other methods) using a short IR burst.
Other things I'd like to be able to measure (inexpensively) in real time: Insulin level, HD/LD/TG, ghrelin (and its recently-discovered agonist, which doesn't have a popular name yet), white cell count, seritonin, and DHEAS. Might find some other items worth monitoring, to add to that list. Gathering a large amount of data on these things might result in a quantum leap in real knowledge on a subject that is now characterized by 'research' that consists largely of:
1) Writing a conclusion based on current biases,
2) Collecting data artfully chosen to support that conclusion,
3) Submitting the 'research' based primarily on the pre-conceived conclusion for review by people with the same or similar biases, and
4) Getting published in a journal of some mutual admiration society.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Put it somewhere where it can't be seen or you'll get endless wisecracks about "Gee Bob, you're a little cranky. Looks like your blood sugar is a bit low, eh?"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
They should install a little flag that pops out of the top of your head like a turkey thermometer. *POP* "Low blood sugar, time to get a snack!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
There are two reasons that insulin can't be taken as a pill. The primary reason that insulin can't be taken as a pill is that insulin is an enzyme, that is made from protein, and our digestive system breaks down all proteins to their consitutant amino acids. If the protein isn't broken down to amino acids, then it can't pass through the intestines into the body, the molecules are too big. You have to bypass the digestive system, meaning injections. The second reason is that insulin has to be very carefully regulated, either too much or too little causes problems. Pills can't be adjusted to that level, because the digestive system causes a delay between taking the drug and it entering the system. So, it's basically impossible for insulin pills to be manufactured.
See Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution for details.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
I don't believe that they claim the GlucoWatch should be used as an accurate point-sample meter, but rather as a continuous monitoring device to indicate trends. Theoretically it lets you know the approx rate at which your glucose is rising/falling so that you can take the appropriate measures. The utility of the device probably depends on your personal diabetes management strategy -- whether you control your meds, or just your food, etc.
I have been told that its method of sampling tends to leave scar tissue behind, but I have no first hand (wrist?) experience of the product.
Couldn't scrape up the cash for that second nipple?
I'm kind of surprised there is any stigma left to piercings considering how many people I see with 6 or more...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
"Life expectancy" over the last century is a misleading average, which includes, among other things, two global wars in the first half of the last century. *Maximum* lifespan has remained fairly constant, while infant mortality and death of women during childbirth has declined. Various medical advances do in fact account for most of that improvement. The remainder is mostly from changes which make driving and working safer (divided highways, workplace safely rules, etc).
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Now all I need is a tattoo to tell me when I've had too much coffee...
..brings shaking cup to lips..
There is such a level?
Never!
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.