新科技:一种可以检测血糖的隐形眼镜
说起对血糖进行实时监控的手段时，糖尿病患者的选择十分有限。
Medical researchers have been searching for a noninvasive alternative to the self-administered fingerprick test, or a continuous monitor with a sensor worn under the skin. Now a team of Korean researchers think they have a solution: a contact lens that keeps tabs on the glucose in your tears.
医学研究人员一直在寻找一种无创的替代方法来进行随时随地的自我检测，至少发明出可以皮下佩戴的全天候传感器。现在有一支韩国研发团队找到了一个解决方案：用隐形眼镜监视眼泪中的葡萄糖含量。
Park et al., Science Advances
It's not the first time this has been proposed - back in 2014, Google announced it was working on a glucose-monitoring contact lens, but it has not yet eventuated - if it's still even under development.
这不是第一次有人想到隐形眼镜。早在2014年，谷歌便宣布开发一种可以测血糖的隐形眼镜，但至今尚未完成——如果它还在开发中的话。
Materials scientists Jihun Park and colleagues at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have prototyped and tested their device on rabbits - and report that it causes no adverse reactions.
韩国蔚山国立科学和技术研究院的材料科学家Jihun Park及其同事已经在兔子身上进行了原型实验和测试，并报告说它不会引起不良反应。
Moreover, it's soft and flexible, with only a few small rigid components, to be as comfortable as possible to the wearer. It contains neither brittle nor bulky components that could block the vision or harm the eye.
而且它柔软又有弹性，只有极少数的刚性部件，尽可能舒适地满足佩戴者。它既不含易碎和厚重的成分，不会阻挡视力或伤害眼睛。
The components inside the contact lens are arrayed around the edge, away from the pupil. They consist of a glucose sensor, a small, outward-facing green LED, an antenna and a rectifier, all connected by a web of superfine, flexible wires.
隐形眼镜内的组件围绕边缘排列，远离瞳孔。它们由一个葡萄糖传感器，一个朝外的小型绿色LED，一个天线和一个整流器组成，全部由超细柔性电线连接。
The antenna and rectifier receive radiofrequency signals from a transmitter, and convert them into the tiny amount of electricity needed to power the glucose monitor and the LED.
天线和整流器接收来自发射器的射频信号，并将其转换成电能，满足葡萄糖监测器和LED微弱的电力需求。
When glucose levels spike into high, the LED - outward-facing so it doesn't interfere with vision - switches off.
当葡萄糖水平飙升到高点时，朝向外的LED会被关闭，因此不会干扰到正常视物。
This means the wearer has to look into a mirror to see it, but it does work, even though glucose levels in tears are five to 10 times less concentrated than blood glucose levels.
这也意味着佩戴者不得不通过镜子来查看自己的血糖的含量，但它确实有效，即使眼泪中的葡萄糖浓度比血糖浓度低5-10倍。
It sounds bulky, but the components inside the lens - even the rigid parts, such as the silicon pads in the glucose monitor - are only one hundredth the thickness of the lens itself.
听起来好像很笨重，但镜片内部的部件——即使是刚性部件，如葡萄糖监测器中的硅垫片，也只是镜片本身厚度的百分之一。
The team hasn't tested the lens on humans yet, but they have tested it on rabbits. The rabbits showed no adverse reaction to the lens, the team said.
该团队尚未进行人体测试，但他们已经在兔子身上进行了测试。报告说，兔子对镜片没有任何不良反应。
This is important particularly because the glucose monitor uses the enzyme glucose oxidase to bind to sugar - and a by-product of this process is hydrogen peroxide, which could damage or irritate the eye.
这一点尤为重要，因为葡萄糖监测仪使用葡萄糖氧化酶与糖结合 ——此过程的副产品是过氧化氢，可能会损伤或刺激眼球。
Not only was it tolerated just fine, but the research team found the lens also accurately tracked the rabbits' glucose levels.
它不仅安全性良好，而且研究团队发现镜片准确地追踪了兔子的血糖水平。
There may be some way to go before contact lenses of this kind are ready for use by humans, but this proof of concept shows that it could be only a matter of time (and more hard work by scientists).
在人类可以使用之前，或许还有一段路要走，但现在至少表明这条路是可行的，未来只是一个时间问题(科学家们，请更加努力工作吧)。
"We developed a method to fabricate a soft, smart contact lens that can monitor glucose levels in tears to indicate the diabetic condition in real time through a display with wireless operations," the team wrote in their paper."The in vivo tests using a live rabbit ... provided the substantial promise of future smart contact lenses for noninvasive health care monitoring using human eyes and tears."
“使用活体兔子进行的体内测试……为应用于人眼和眼泪的未来智能隐形眼镜进行非侵入性卫生监测实验提供了实质性的安全承诺。”他们在报告中写道。
The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.
该研究已发表在《科学前沿》Science Advances上。
