There is no cure. Intensive therapy and frequent glucose testing has numerous benefits. Dr. William Herman and his colleagues have determined that intensive therapy delays the time to first complication by about 15 years, blindness by about eight years and end-stage renal disease and lower extremity amputation by about six years. However, many hurdles remain before these products reach the commercial marketplace. The devices may have to be calibrated to individual users.
Current instrumentation lacks specificity due to substantial chemical and physical interferences.
The devices use multivariate regression analyses that convert the optical signal to a glucose concentration. Large amounts of data are used to build the glucose model and must take into consideration the concentration range, sampling environment and other factors involved in the analysis. First an instrument must be designed that accurately detects glucose concentration. Considerable progress has been made in the development of non-invasive glucose devices however, at this time, frequent testing using invasive blood glucose determination via fingerstick provides the best information for diabetes disease management. On Biomedical Optical Spectroscopy and Diagnostics 1996.