Determination of glucose by capillary electrophoresis/laser-induced fluorescence in transdermally collected samples

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) with laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection has been used for the determination of glucose in samples collected by noninvasive means. The method uses an enzymatic reaction scheme that provides for the determination of small quantities of glucose with detection limits of 80 nM. This approach is used to evaluate passive transdermal diffusion as a noninvasive means to sample glucose in vivo. A simple sampling cell design is presented. Sample collection was performed on volunteer human subjects. Our experiments show that fluctuations in blood glucose concentration are reflected in the samples obtained by passive transdermal diffusion after glucose intake. The results indicate that glucose from the subcutaneous fluid can be accessed by passive diffusion.