Transdermal amperometric biosensors for continuous glucose monitoring in diabetes

Diabetes is a highly prevalent and chronic metabolic disease, and the continuous monitoring of diabetes is of great importance for diabetes management. Interstitial fluid glucose has an excellent correlation with blood glucose, and therefore transdermal glucose biosensors can provide accurate monitoring of diabetes. The ongoing challenges are the synergetic integration of biosensing principles, device configuration, signal transduction, novel materials, and fabrication methods. In recent years, there have been several attempts for developing new-transdermal glucose biosensors. To successfully construct a transdermal glucose biosensor, there are several interesting questions: What is the sensing principle for diabetes monitoring? What device configuration should be used? What kinds of materials should be chosen and how to integrate them into one device? What are the application and commercial status? This review would attempt to address the above questions, and explore the fundamental aspects and the practical applications of a variety of transdermal glucose biosensors. It is antici-pated that this review could open up exciting opportunities for the development of next-generation transdermal devices, as well as providing monitoring methods for diabetes patients.