Blood Glucose Meters

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Alasdair - 12 Jul 2008 22:25 GMT

Here in the UK, blood glucose meters are relatively cheap as the
manufacturers and resellers make their money from the strips on to
which the blood is placed for testing. These strips can be available
free of charge on prescription but because of their cost, our local
NHS will not prescribe them for type 2 diabetics.

Perhaps someone can tell me how these meters actually work as it
occurred to me that the expensive strips are only vehicles which take
the blood into the meter so that its glucose concentration can be
determined by shining infra-red light on to it. My analysis may be
total rubbish but if it is not, why would strips of ordinary blotting
paper not do the same job?

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Alasdair.

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Robert1 - 12 Jul 2008 23:22 GMT

> Here in the UK, blood glucose meters are relatively cheap as the
> manufacturers and resellers make their money from the strips on to
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> --
> Alasdair.

The test strips are actually impregnated with an elaborate array of
chemicals and enzymes that start a cascade of chemical reactions that
causes a final product to be measurable. They are not simply blotting
paper with the instrument doing most of the work. In actuality it is
the strip that does most of the work and the meter has the easier job
of simply looking at one color wavelength. The meter is calibrated to
convert that color intensity into concentration units.

If you were to find urine strips, they basically do the same thing and
one doesn't need a meter to read it. It is roughly the same thing
except no visible blood is present and rough concentration units are
rounded off.

Hope it helps.

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