Medicine's Next Big Thing: Body EnhancersPITTSBURGH (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- More than 21 million Americans are living with diabetes, and nearly 5 million Americans have a failing heart. Soon, two scientific breakthroughs could change the fate of these patients.

Even when she's having fun, Ali Kutz is always thinking about her blood sugar. She's had type 1 diabetes for 11 years. "It's the day in, day out," she says. "You never get a break from it. It's continuous. It's life." She pricks her finger to check her blood sugar up to eight times a day.

"It's just a pain to have to do it all the time, but to make sure that I stay in a certain range, I have to. It's just life, and I have to learn to deal with it," Kutz says.

Medicine's Next Big Thing: Body EnhancersHer life could get easier in the future. Physical Chemist Sanford Asher, Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh, is developing a sugar-sensing contact lens.

"A person with diabetes would wear the contact lens, and one piece of it would report on the glucose in the tear fluid," Dr. Asher tells Ivanhoe. Photonic crystals are set in a standard contact lens. The crystals simply change color as blood sugar levels rise and fall. Instead of finger pricks, diabetics just need a mirror.

Dr. Asher says they would compare that color to a color wheel, "When they find the match, there will be a number there that will give them the glucose concentration in their blood."

Medicine's Next Big Thing: Body EnhancersThe contacts are still in development, but Asher expects his glucose-sensing contact lenses to be in human trials within the year, and he is hopeful. "It would change their lifestyle and the prognosis for diabetics," he says. "I think it will revolutionize their life."

"Just to be able to have that extra opportunity not to have to test, to be able to use a contact lens? I think it's an amazing idea," Kutz says.

Another amazing idea -- the body battery -- will save failing hearts.

Bioengineer Dennis Trumble, M.S. of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, says, "The potential impact of this device, if it works the way we think it can, could be very significant."

Trumble's solution is a muscle energy converter (MEC) implanted in the chest and attached to a large muscle in the back. As the muscle contracts, an artificial tendon pulls an arm on the device, generating enough power to keep the heart pumping.

Medicine's Next Big Thing: Body Enhancers"We are basically just harnessing one muscle to help another, which we are taking the back muscle to help the heart muscle," Trumble says. With no external power source like standard heart pumps, patients would soon forget they have a pump at all.

Trumble says, "There are literally millions of people who can benefit from this kind of thing." His body battery is already helping dogs with failing hearts.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Morgan Kelly
Science News Representative
University of Pittsburgh
(412) 624-4356
mekelly@pitt.edu

Dennis Trumble, MS
Allegheny General Hospital
Pittsburgh, PA
trumble@wpahs.org