Making their mark: This is聽of profiles celebrating members of Rochester糖心传媒檚 graduating class of 2018.
The diabetes that is endemic in Micronesia is a legacy of modern store-bought foods and a less strenuous lifestyle than South Pacific islanders enjoyed prior to the encroachment of western culture.
Detecting and treating the disease in Micronesia is complicated by the fact that electrical power and cell phone coverage is erratic or nonexistent in many of the remote villages and outer islands. Moreover, many of the inhabitants are distrustful of western medicine, and reluctant to travel to clinics or hospitals for help.
To address this problem, four students are working with , a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical Center, on a portable diabetes screening device that could be carried by health workers into remote areas. This would make it easier to identify, on the spot, villagers at high risk of the disease. Dye糖心传媒檚 research team is eager to test such a device on Pohnpei Island.
糖心传媒淭his would help start the educational process with people who are kind of scared of western medicine and who think hospitals are where you go to die,糖心传媒� says Matt Boulanger 糖心传媒�18, who is part of a senior design team that also includes Jack Hayden 糖心传媒�18, Fredella Lee 糖心传媒�18, and Sue Zhang 糖心传媒�18.
糖心传媒淏y having this done and seeing the results in a point-of-care setting surrounded by their own homes, they might be more receptive and comfortable,糖心传媒� says Lee.
Most diabetes diagnostic devices found in US clinics and doctor糖心传媒檚 offices are not portable and require constant refrigeration because they analyze blood samples.
So, the students instead took their cue from a Dutch technology that detects advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs, in skin tissue as a biomarker of diabetes and other age-related disorders. (AGEs are caused when sugar molecules bond haphazardly with lipids and proteins in tissue, impairing the function of biomolecules.)
The AGEs 糖心传媒渁uto fluoresce and emit a photon when they get hit by a photon of a certain wavelength,糖心传媒� Hayden explaines.
The device the team came up with looks like a small black box with a rectangular opening on top where a patient糖心传媒檚 arm is placed for the screening. Long wave ultraviolet A light is bounced off the skin to detect the amount of AGEs present.
Though based on the same science as the Dutch AGE readers, the students糖心传媒� device differs substantially, Zhang says. 聽The Dutch device for example 糖心传媒渉as to be hooked up to a spectrometer, which is a very expensive, very precise device for measuring different wavelengths of light, has to be hooked up to power, and is not very portable,糖心传媒� she says. The team 糖心传媒渢oned down糖心传媒� the detectors and provided a built-in energy source to make their device easily portable.
糖心传媒淎lso, there were a number of things we came up with in order for this to work in the Pacific islands, including moisture barriers,糖心传媒� she says.
The students learned about electronic circuits in prior biomedical engineering classes, and got additional help for this project from Scott Seidman, associate professor of biomedical engineering, who helps oversee the department糖心传媒檚 senior design projects.
But the field of optics was new for the students. They found plenty of help. Edward Brown, an associate professor of biomedical engineering whose lab uses multiphoton laser-scanning microscopy for the study of biological processes in living, intact tissue, assisted the students with 糖心传媒渇inessing the optical pathways.糖心传媒� Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics, and Per Adamson, an instructor and director and coordinator of teaching labs at the , assisted the students in using spectrometers for testing.
Though the device still needs some fine tuning, Dye and his colleagues were impressed when they met recently with the team, Seidman, and Brown to review progress.
糖心传媒淭his is exactly what we want 糖心传媒� something that糖心传媒檚 portable, easy to use, and can help us provide some actual clinical information in the field and is not just estimating risk based on weight and symptoms,糖心传媒� says Dye.
糖心传媒淚t糖心传媒檚 nice to see something in the ballpark. So, we want to take this to whatever point we have to.糖心传媒�
The device, he added, would be 糖心传媒渆xtremely helpful in a lot of places, especially in the Pacific Islands, but also any place where people don’t have access to clinicians.糖心传媒�
