Correlation Analysis between Blood Glucose and Tear Glucose in Animal Models Using Smart Contact Lenses

With the development of a healthcare system, studies regarding the diagnosis of diabetes non-invasively by monitoring the glucose level in various body fluids such as tear, saliva and ISF are ongoing. Among them, tear is emerging as the one of the most promising body fluids for monitoring health conditions and many studies are underway to measure the tear glucose level through various biomedical platforms including contact lenses. For these platforms to be reliable for diagnosing diabetes, it is essential to clarify the correlation between blood glucose and tear glucose which remains controversial. To address this controversial issue, studies that present the relationship between blood glucose and tear glucose using smart contact lens were reported. However, previous smart contact lenses were operated only at specified time which is non-continuous and have failed to identify the exact correlation.<br/>Herein, we present an in-depth investigation of the correlation between blood glucose and tear glucose. Our smart contact lenses are capable of continuous and long-term measurements at short time intervals which enables exact comparative analysis. The developed smart contact lenses were applied to normal and diabetic animal models for authentic clinical investigation of the correlation between blood glucose and tear glucose. This approach can offer unprecedented prospects for applications of the advanced biomedical platforms in further clinical trials.