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Doc comes up with ground-breaking method for diagnosing diabetes via a patient’s breath

With the new method, the patient could be asked to simply exhale and will know the result in under a minute.
Kalbar/TFN

A Polish doctor and his team have made a major breakthrough in how diabetes can be diagnosed.

Dr. Artur Rydosz, 36 from Ustrzyki Dolne in south-eastern Poland, has spent the last eight years developing and testing innovative technology to detect diseases such as diabetes via the patients breath.

Currently, if diabetes is suspected many patients will be asked a series of questions known as the risk score test by their physician and if they score above a certain level they will either be sent for a blood test or advised to watch their health.

Dr Artur Rydosz said: “We really want to develop a medical device, not a gadget for the mass consumer market.”Kalbar/TFN

With the new method, the patient could be asked to simply exhale and will know the result in under a minute.

Dr. Rydosz told TFN: “We were looking at novel techniques for non-invasive monitoring of glucose.

“We started the new way with breath analysis, so we tried to find some biomarkers in the human body that can tell you about some metabolism product, glucose concentration and someday can replace the conventional glucometers by non-invasive novel devices.

“The system is based on the semiconductive resistive gas sensors, so what we do is we track the low concentration of some biomarkers that you have in the breath you exhale and we try to correlate them with your metabolic and glycaemic level.”

People with diabetes are twice as likely to die early than those without, and in 2019 accounted for 4.2 million deaths, the 7th largest cause in the world.WHO

People with diabetes are twice as likely to die early than those without, and in 2019 accounted for 4.2 million deaths, the 7th largest cause in the world.

Type 1 diabetes usually starts in childhood and is typically caused by hereditary factors whereas Type 2 diabetes begins later and is caused typically by lifestyle factors and gestational diabetes which effects women during pregnancy. 

There are another nine types of diabetes but these affect less than two percent of suffers.

Rydosz said: “Diabetes is the real pandemic, more than COVID. This device will be able to be used as a screening test.

Dr. Rydosz said: “The motivation is to help kids and older people. The problem with kids is they don’t understand it and with elderly they can ignore it or forget. Adults can be annoyed about the inconvenience of the tests or insulin injections but they can deal with it.”Matt Chesin

“With Type 1 you have a quick progress of this and could be in hospital in a few weeks but with Type 2, everything starts five to 10 years before.

“People have no idea, the patient can feel a bit more stress or experience an increase in thirst but most of the time this isn’t recognized as the disease.

“With the screening test you can do it faster and it is more convenient.”

At the moment, the device requires calibrating for each individual user but Dr. Rydoz and his team at Advance Diagnostic Equipment, are working towards a model where calibration won’t be needed and the device could become universal.  

Rydosz said: “The system is based on the semiconductive resistive gas sensors, so what we do is we track the low concentration of some biomarkers that you have in the breath you exhale and we try to correlate them with your metabolic and glycaemic level.”Kalbar/TFN

Rydoz said: “We really want to develop a medical device, not a gadget for the mass consumer market.

“Diabetes is a serious disease, if you have cancer you can say during your holidays that you don’t care but with diabetes you must pay attention to this every day.

“You need to carefully control your glycemia to avoid hyper or hypoglycaemia, there is no holidays from diabetes.”

The doctor, who has established a charitable foundation called ‘Z cukrzycą na TY’ (Diabetes for you) to help people who are newly diagnosed adjust to life with the disease by showing them healthier habits including dietary advice, is also writing a book about his research which will be published in the winter.

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