新科技:一種可以檢測血糖的隱形眼鏡

When it comes to keeping your blood sugar in check, people with diabetes have limited options.

說起對血糖進行實時監(jiān)控的手段時，糖尿病患者的選擇十分有限。

Medical researchers have been searching for a noninvasive alternative to the self-administered fingerprick test, or a continuous monitor with a sensor worn under the skin. Now a team of Korean researchers think they have a solution: a contact lens that keeps tabs on the glucose in your tears.

醫(yī)學研究人員一直在尋找一種無創(chuàng)的替代方法來進行隨時隨地的自我檢測，至少發(fā)明出可以皮下佩戴的全天候傳感器。現(xiàn)在有一支韓國研發(fā)團隊找到了一個解決方案：用隱形眼鏡監(jiān)視眼淚中的葡萄糖含量。

Park et al., Science Advances

It's not the first time this has been proposed - back in 2014, Google announced it was working on a glucose-monitoring contact lens, but it has not yet eventuated - if it's still even under development.

這不是第一次有人想到隱形眼鏡。早在2014年，谷歌便宣布開發(fā)一種可以測血糖的隱形眼鏡，但至今尚未完成——如果它還在開發(fā)中的話。

Materials scientists Jihun Park and colleagues at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have prototyped and tested their device on rabbits - and report that it causes no adverse reactions.

韓國蔚山國立科學和技術研究院的材料科學家Jihun Park及其同事已經(jīng)在兔子身上進行了原型實驗和測試，并報告說它不會引起不良反應。

Moreover, it's soft and flexible, with only a few small rigid components, to be as comfortable as possible to the wearer. It contains neither brittle nor bulky components that could block the vision or harm the eye.

而且它柔軟又有彈性，只有極少數(shù)的剛性部件，盡可能舒適地滿足佩戴者。它既不含易碎和厚重的成分，不會阻擋視力或傷害眼睛。

The components inside the contact lens are arrayed around the edge, away from the pupil. They consist of a glucose sensor, a small, outward-facing green LED, an antenna and a rectifier, all connected by a web of superfine, flexible wires.

隱形眼鏡內(nèi)的組件圍繞邊緣排列，遠離瞳孔。它們由一個葡萄糖傳感器，一個朝外的小型綠色LED，一個天線和一個整流器組成，全部由超細柔性電線連接。

The antenna and rectifier receive radiofrequency signals from a transmitter, and convert them into the tiny amount of electricity needed to power the glucose monitor and the LED.

天線和整流器接收來自發(fā)射器的射頻信號，并將其轉換成電能，滿足葡萄糖監(jiān)測器和LED微弱的電力需求。

When glucose levels spike into high, the LED - outward-facing so it doesn't interfere with vision - switches off.

當葡萄糖水平飆升到高點時，朝向外的LED會被關閉，因此不會干擾到正常視物。

This means the wearer has to look into a mirror to see it, but it does work, even though glucose levels in tears are five to 10 times less concentrated than blood glucose levels.

這也意味著佩戴者不得不通過鏡子來查看自己的血糖的含量，但它確實有效，即使眼淚中的葡萄糖濃度比血糖濃度低5-10倍。

It sounds bulky, but the components inside the lens - even the rigid parts, such as the silicon pads in the glucose monitor - are only one hundredth the thickness of the lens itself.

聽起來好像很笨重，但鏡片內(nèi)部的部件——即使是剛性部件，如葡萄糖監(jiān)測器中的硅墊片，也只是鏡片本身厚度的百分之一。

The team hasn't tested the lens on humans yet, but they have tested it on rabbits. The rabbits showed no adverse reaction to the lens, the team said.

該團隊尚未進行人體測試，但他們已經(jīng)在兔子身上進行了測試。報告說，兔子對鏡片沒有任何不良反應。

This is important particularly because the glucose monitor uses the enzyme glucose oxidase to bind to sugar - and a by-product of this process is hydrogen peroxide, which could damage or irritate the eye.

這一點尤為重要，因為葡萄糖監(jiān)測儀使用葡萄糖氧化酶與糖結合 ——此過程的副產(chǎn)品是過氧化氫，可能會損傷或刺激眼球。

Not only was it tolerated just fine, but the research team found the lens also accurately tracked the rabbits' glucose levels.

它不僅安全性良好，而且研究團隊發(fā)現(xiàn)鏡片準確地追蹤了兔子的血糖水平。

There may be some way to go before contact lenses of this kind are ready for use by humans, but this proof of concept shows that it could be only a matter of time (and more hard work by scientists).

在人類可以使用之前，或許還有一段路要走，但現(xiàn)在至少表明這條路是可行的，未來只是一個時間問題(科學家們，請更加努力工作吧)。

"We developed a method to fabricate a soft, smart contact lens that can monitor glucose levels in tears to indicate the diabetic condition in real time through a display with wireless operations," the team wrote in their paper."The in vivo tests using a live rabbit ... provided the substantial promise of future smart contact lenses for noninvasive health care monitoring using human eyes and tears."

“使用活體兔子進行的體內(nèi)測試……為應用于人眼和眼淚的未來智能隱形眼鏡進行非侵入性衛(wèi)生監(jiān)測實驗提供了實質(zhì)性的安全承諾。”他們在報告中寫道。

The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

該研究已發(fā)表在《科學前沿》Science Advances上。