The Accuracy of Home Glucose Meters in Hypoglycemia

Abstract Background: Home glucose meters (HGMs) may not be accurate enough to sense hypoglycemia. We evaluated the accuracy and the capillary and venous comparability of five different HGMs (Optium Xceed™ [Abbott Diabetes Care, Alameda, CA, USA], Contour® TS [Bayer Diabetes Care, Basel, Switzerland], Accu-Chek® Go [Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland], OneTouch® Select™ [Lifescan, Milpitas, CA, USA], and EZ Smart [Tyson Bioresearch Inc., Chu-Nan, Taiwan]) in an adult population. Methods: The insulin hypoglycemia test was performed to 59 subjects (56 males; 23.6 ± 3.2 years old). Glucose was measured from forearm venous blood and finger capillary samples both before and after regular insulin (0.1 U/kg) was injected. Venous samples were analyzed in the reference laboratory by the hexokinase method. In vitro tests for method comparison and precision analyses were also performed by spiking the glucose-depleted venous blood. Results: All HGMs failed to sense hypoglycemia to some extend. EZ Smart was significantly i...