Light Test Illuminates Diabetes Woes

Oct. 25, 2006 - Doctors may soon be able to identify people at risk of diabetes complications by simply shining bright light on a patch of skin below the elbow.

The test uses a new tool, from the Dutch firm DiagnOptics, to measure fluorescent deposits in the skin. These deposits may sound pretty, but they can create serious problems for diabetes patients.

In a new study of patients with type 2 diabetes, Helen L. Lutgers, MD, of Groningen University Medical Center, Netherlands, and colleagues report that people with diabetes have much more fluorescent skin than people without the disease.

Moreover, the more diabetes complications a person has, the more fluorescent their skin.

The explanation?

The body's energy supply comes from burning sugar. People with diabetes don't burn sugar efficiently. This leads to a buildup of sugar byproducts that damages the walls of blood vessels -- and eventually causes heart, eye, brain, and nerve damage.

These sugar byproducts -- advanced glycation end products, or AGEs -- glow when lit by fluorescent light. The tool from DiagnOptics detects the glowing AGEs.

"With this tool, doctors could easily check people with diabetes in an outpatient clinic setting to see whether they may already be developing dangerous complications," Lutgers says in a news release. "The sooner complications are detected, the better the chance of preventing progression of damage."

Doctors currently use blood tests to see how well people with diabetes are keeping their blood sugar under control. But these tests only tell how well a person has done recently. AGE deposits, Lutgers and colleagues note, provide more "long-term memory" of blood-sugar control.

The study appears in the December issue of Diabetes Care. It was funded by the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation.

Two of Lutgers' colleagues are the co-founders of DiagnOptics.