Worth a damn, Bob! (WAS: Re: In Charge Meter)

[Guest guest]

Bob

> In other words, this thing isn't worth a damn.

It has got to be worth the $9.95 introductory price that most of us paid for

it, together with a few strips. And it is useful for " regular " BG tests so

you get the Glucoprotein facility virtually for nothing. It is just the cost

of the Glucoprotein test strips that hurts and then only if you suspect for

some reason that they should be cheaper.

> If you do a couple of 'regular' blood glucose

> measurements per day, with a good meter, at

> 2 hours past eating, you are far more likely to

> know what your hba1c is than if you try and use

> this thing ....

There is only one way to " know what your hba1c is " and that is to have an

HbA1c test made. Why would you want to know in advance what the

result is going to be? If you have the test made every 2-3 months you get

all the information that you are going to get out of the test. Strictly

speaking, the test isn't for your benefit, anyway, but for your physician so

that he/she can check that you have been taking your medication as

prescribed - very many diabetics don't!.

> ....especially given the bizarre measurements

> noted here and elsewhere.

To my mind, the fructosamine test is looking at much the same thing as the

HbA1c but from a different angle. Your recipe for success (a couple of

readings a day, 2 hours past eating) might work for you, especially if your

metabolism is stabilized, in which case you don't really need the

Glucoprotein part anyway - that was precisely what I was claiming. But for

somebody with intermittent gastroparesis in which, at unpredictable

intervals, their stomach doesn't empty until 3-4 hours after the meal is

swallowed, the measurement 2 hours after a meal is often just as low (or

lower) as before starting to eat. My wife has chronic pancreatitis and

occasionally has a week of readings well over 200 mg% for several hours

after her meals. A Glucoprotein measurement made after one such week still

showed " good " control (which was reassuring) and her HbA1c test just after

that week was over was still in the low 6's and lower than the one for the

period before.

The reason for that, in my opinion, is that both tests measure a long-term

average and she was eating a lot less during the days when the pancreatitis

was active. Her BG between meals often went quite low (60-70 mg%) for long

periods so the hours she spent at over 200 mg% had no effect whatever on

either the Glucoprotein test result nor on the HbA1c. How could it?

> And the expense is therefore hard to justify.

Having an independent check of the situation was sufficient to justify the

expense for us, but then I never did have any exaggerated expectations after

I read about the +/-10% accuracy. The more information you have, the better

a judgement you can make.

> (my experience with multiple measurements on

> my glucometer elite has been nothing like +- 10%,

> incidentally.)

There is no way you can know that unless you have access to an independent

measurement system of much higher accuracy. But it seems to be fairly well

known that:

1. you can compare only with a laboratory instrument

2. there is a considerable variation from one laboratory to another

3. there is a difference between serum measurements and capillary blood

measurements

4. there is a variation between blood samples taken at different times from

the same body

5. there is a variation between blood samples taken from different parts of

the same body (i.e. from different fingers - and taking two samples

at about the same time from the same finger is a known source of error)

If you are able to obtain repeated Glucoprotein results well within +/-10%

of each other consistently then I would suspect that you have a large

systematic error (positive or negative) that is masking the individual

errors of the Glucoprotein test strips (maybe a bright light falling on

the test area). However, if you are referring here to " regular " BG

measurements then that is a different measurement method and the two

cannot be usefully compared. The error is primarily in the test strips and

not in the meter itself.

> Use of this device is clearly more beneficial for

> LXN than for anyone else.

I doubt that they have even recovered their development costs yet, far less

made a profit. But since we will never get to know their pricing policy, we

have no way to judge.

Don't trash your meter yet, Bob - you still have the excitement of being a

pioneer in home fructosamine measurement!

> PS: Folks, you all have a delete key. It gets TIRESOME to see the same

> long post reproduced in toto 3 or 4 times in one day's digest.

Yeah sure, Bob, but YOU also left my complete (long) message tacked onto

the end of YOUR posting! Why didn't you delete it before sending? Leaving it

there like that would get your posting rights suspended from some lists I

have belonged to!