Continuous noninvasive monitoring of changes in human skin optical properties during oral intake of different sugars with optical coherence tomography

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of blood glucose concentration (BGC) on in vivo human skin optical properties after oral intake of different sugars. In vivo optical properties of human skin were measured with a spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Experimental results show that increase of BGC causes a decrease in the skin attenuation coefficient. And the maximum decrements in mean attenuation coefficient of skin tissue after drinking glucose, sucrose and fructose solution are 47.0%, 36.4% and 16.5% compared with that after drinking water, respectively (p < 0.05). The results also show that blood glucose levels of the forearm skin tissue are delayed compared with finger-stick blood glucose, and there are significant differences in the time delays after oral intake of different sugars. The time delay between mean attenuation coefficient and BGC after drinking glucose solution is evidently larger than that after drinking sucrose solution, and that after drinking sucrose solution is larger than that after drinking fructose solution. Our pilot studies indicate that OCT technique is capable of non-invasive, real-time, and sensitive monitoring of skin optical properties in human subjects during oral intake of different sugars.