Veettil, Sona

Background: Recent advances in accuracy and reliability of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices have focused renewed interest on the use of such technology for therapeutic dosing of insulin without the need for independent confirmatory blood glucose meter measurements. An important issue that remains is the susceptibility of CGM devices to erroneous readings in the presence of common pharmacologic interferences. We report on a new method of assessing CGM sensor error to pharmacologic interferences using the example of oral administration of acetaminophen. Materials and Methods: We examined the responses of several different Food and Drug Administration–approved and commercially available CGM systems (Dexcom [San Diego, CA] Seven ® Plus™, Medtronic Diabetes [Northridge, CA] Guardian ® , and Dexcom G4 ® Platinum) to oral acetaminophen in 10 healthy volunteers without diabetes. Microdialysis catheters were placed in the abdominal subcutaneous tissue. Blood and microdialysate samples were collected periodically and analyzed for glucose and acetaminophen concentrations before and after oral ingestion of 1 g of acetaminophen. We compared the response of CGM sensors with the measured acetaminophen concentrations in the blood and interstitial fluid. Results: Although plasma glucose concentrations remained constant at approximately 90 mg/dL (approximately 5 m M ) throughout the study, CGM glucose measurements varied between approximately 85 to 400 mg/dL (from approximately 5 to 22 m M ) due to interference from the acetaminophen. The temporal profile of CGM interference followed acetaminophen concentrations measured in interstitial fluid (ISF). Conclusions: This is the first direct measurement of ISF concentrations of putative CGM interferences with simultaneous measurements of CGM performance in the presence of the interferences. The observed interference with glucose measurements in the tested CGM devices coincided temporally with appearance of acetaminophen in the ISF. The method applied here can be used to determine the susceptibility of current and future CGM systems to interference from acetaminophen or other exogenous pharmacologic agents.

Background and Objective: The premise of effective closed-loop insulin therapy for type 1 diabetes (T1D) relies on the accuracy of continuous interstitial fluid glucose sensing that represents the crucial afferent arm of such a system. An important determinant of sensor accuracy is the physiological time lag of glucose transport from the vascular to the interstitial space. The purpose of current studies was to determine the physiological time lag of glucose transport from the vascular to the abdominal subcutaneous interstitial space in T1D. Method: Four microdialysis catheters were inserted into the abdominal subcutaneous space in 6 T1D subjects under overnight fasted conditions. Plasma glucose was maintained at 113.7 ± 6.3 mg/dl using a continuous intravenous insulin infusion. After sequential intravenous bolus administrations of glucose isotopes, timed plasma and interstitial fluid samples were collected chronologically and analyzed for tracer enrichments. Results: We observed a median (range) time lag of tracer appearance (time to detection) into the interstitial space after intravenous bolus of 6.8 (4.8-9.8) minutes, with all participants having detectable values by 9.8 minutes. Conclusions: We conclude that in the overnight fasted state in T1D adults, the delay of glucose appearance from the vascular to the interstitial space is less than 10 minutes, thereby implying that this minimal physiological time lag should not be a major impediment to the development of an effective closed-loop control system for T1D.