No Delay in Glucose Change at Antecubital Skin in Hypoglycemia of Normal Subjects

In the July 2001 issue of Diabetes Care , Jungheim and Koschinsky (1) reported that capillary blood glucose values at forearm lagged behind those at fingertip by maximum 30 min in their particular type 1 diabetic patient rendered to hypoglycemia. They warned that this might result in delay of hypoglycemia detection in diabetic patients and endangered their lives. They hypothesized that this was a physiological phenomenon rather than a pathological delay. We investigated if their observation was physiological. We had 10 nondiabetic healthy volunteers (8 males and 2 females aged 35.0 ± 11.2 years with a BMI of 22.2 ± 3.0 kg/m2) who were hypoglycemic with intravenous bolus injection of human insulin 0.1 unit/kg body wt. Blood glucose levels were monitored …