Researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported that they have developed a pain-free, non-invasive and fast way to make early warning for diabetes.

It is all down to a non-invasive scan equipment that checks the Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) level concentrating in a person's skin tissue.

According to the researchers, they have developed the entire technology for manufacturing from scanning to data processing, of which spatially resolved fluorescence spectroscopy of skin tissue was considered the key technology by the team.

AGEs are a class of stable end products occurring as a result of condensation, rearrangement, cleavage and oxidation modification of free amino groups of large-molecule substances including proteins, amino acids, lipids or nucleic acids with aldehyde groups of reducing sugars under non-enzymatic conditions.

Generally speaking, AGE increases slowly at low level in skin of the people who has normal glycometabolism, however, accelerated accumulation of AGE could be brought for some reason, bad living habits, like smoking, is one of them.

AGE in vivo, especially with an accelerated increase, can induce insulin resistance and impair islet β cells, which damages glucose regulation and then leads to diabetes. That is why AGE has been thought an early risk factor for diabetes.

In this study, the fluorescent property of AGE which may lend a big hand to us for detecting it in skin tissue.

"If we can detect the AGE and its concentration in skin tissue, it will help people know the risk of developing diabetes at early stage and then they can do something. And the fluorescent property makes it feasible to be detected, and we thought the photoelectric technology can solve this," said WANG Yikun, who led the research team.

The team developed a strategy to detect AGE in skin tissue just by emitting low intensity light but highly safe for people on skin. Then the AGE will reflect fluorescence signal that is collected by a high-precision and high-sensitivity array detector. After a data process and analysis, a risk assessment report will be printed out.

"Our equipment opens the door to early warning of diabetes then the people with high risk could do something on it, like changing life habits. And it is pain-free and non-invasive which we think will make the detect method easier to be applied," said WANG.

Now, the team is deploying their equipment in many hospitals, healthcare centers and community services.