These Smart Contacts Could Transform Diabetes Care – NBCNews.com

This artist's rendition of high-tech contact lenses illustrates how transparent biosensors lenses could one day help people track their health. Jack Forkey/Oregon State University

Contact lenses packed with transparent sensors might one day help

These sugar-sensing lenses would give people a way to check their blood sugar levels without drawing blood, according to the scientists.

Typically, people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar by making a tiny prick in their fingertip to draw blood, and then using a small device to measure blood sugar levels.

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But the proposed contact lenses could continuously monitor a person's

Devices that continuously monitor blood sugar levels are available, but they often require the insertion of electrodes under the skin, which can be painful, lead to skin irritation or infections, and must get replaced every several days. Contact lenses that could continuously and noninvasively monitor blood sugar levels could eliminate many of these problems, Herman said. And because

To make the blood-sugar-monitoring contact lens, the researchers used technology that was originally developed for electronic products. Specifically, the researchers tinkered with a material called indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO), whose electronic properties have recently helped boost the image quality in smartphone, tablet and flat-panel displays while also saving power and improving touch-screen sensitivity.

"If you buy an iPhone or an Apple computer or a flat-screen TV nowadays, they use IGZO," Herman told Live Science. He presented his findings on April 4 at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco.

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In the study, the researchers made contact lenses that included transparent sheets of transistors made with IGZO. To test if

The researchers found that the sensors could detect even very low concentrations of glucose, such as the levels typically found in tears.

In theory, more than 2,500 of these sensors could be embedded within a 1-square-millimeter patch of a contact lens, Herman said. And by using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the data collected by the lenses could be wirelessly transmitted to

But measuring blood sugar levels isn't the only potential use for

For example, sensors could be developed to measure a chemical called uric acid, which is found in higher levels in people with kidney disease or

"You could also look for molecules related to HIV or cancer," Herman said. "We want to see if there are good ways to catch cancer at very early stages, before it's a fatal disease."

Herman cautioned that the lenses are still in the very early stages of development. It could be a year or more before a prototype biosensing contact lens is ready for animal testing, he said. And tests in humans are even further off, he said.

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