GlaxoSmithKline has its hands full right now big-time, defending its conduct over the ever-deepening Avandia scandal. But the big-name pharma company isn't giving up the fight. (No surprise there...) Today Glaxo ran full-page advertisements in a number of prominent US newspapers. The move is described by Britain's Guardian as the launching of a major PR war. The ads are featured in fifteen major newspapers, says the Guardian, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times. The ad is a direct appeal to patients, taking the form of an open letter from Glaxo's chief medical officer, Dr. Ronald Krall. (Guess he's working some late nights at the moment, huh?)

The ads were timed to appear one day before the congressional hearing on the US Food and Drug Administration's work on Avandia and consumer safety, which is scheduled for tomorrow. Another Glaxo-penned letter defending Avandia was also published in the medical journal the Lancet. Said a company spokesman of today's ads: "We are determined to make sure the science we feel backs us up is heard."

This article also notes that weekly prescriptions for Avandia have fallen by sixteen percent since the recent publication of a damaging article by Dr. Steven Nissen in the New England Journal of Medicine. Nissen asserted that Avandia could increase the risk of heart attack by forty-three percent and the risk of cardiac-related death by sixty-four percent.

By the way, it is worth checking out the Wikipedia entry on Glaxo for a brief rundown of the company's history, including previous wrangles with the media and the law over its products. Note, though, the entry has not yet been updated in the wake of the Avandia scandal.

In the next 3 to 5 years, we will have a new generation of control upon us providing continuous glucose monitoring. Some of these marvelous technologies will not require a drop of blood, while others will embody the tried-and-true stick-to-itiveness we all know and loathe.

Please join me as we browse the isles of things to come (and things now available) for continuous glucose monitoring.

The DexCom STS Continuous Glucose Monitoring System is a glucose sensor that reports glucose values every 5 minutes for up to 72 hours. The sensor is inserted in the abdomen. After a 2 hour start-up period, the STS System is calibrated with 2 fingerstick measurements taken by a traditional glucose meter. Checkout Amy Tenderich's review on Diabetes Mine of the DexCom Continuous Glucose Monitoring Sytem.

MiniMed Medtronic has 3 different versions: the Gold, the Guardian RT, and the Paradigm Real-Time Continuous Monitor.

Menarini GlucoDay S is a device worn by the patient for the continuous monitoring of glucose in the subcutaneous interstitial fluid. Monitoring is performed via insertion in the abdominal region of a microfibre for dialysis having the diameter of a human hair. Inside the microfibre a solution transports the patient's glucose to a biosensor within the instrument.

M-Biotech Glucose Biosensor is a minimally invasive implantation for painless and convenient monitoring. The key feature of our efficient Glucose Biosensor is the combination of a glucose-sensitive hydrogel and a miniature pressure sensor. Glucose-responsive hydrogels are biocompatible materials that either swell or contract when the glucose concentrations change in the body fluid surrounding the hydrogel.

The PreciSense System includes a microcapsule placement unit and a light detecting non-invasive reader unit. The microcapsule placement unit poses the right dose of glucose-responding microcapsules in the upper layer of the skin, painlessly. The glucose assay components in the microcapsules generate a fluorescence signal that corresponds to the glucose level. The non-invasive reader unit monitors this glucose binding event through FRET, Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer, which is directly related to the concentration of glucose.

Sensors for Medicine and Science glucose sensor is implanted under the skin in a short outpatient procedure. The sensor automatically measures interstitial glucose every few minutes, without any user intervention. The sensor implant will communicate wirelessly with a small external reader.

Synthetic Blood Implanted Glucose Biosensor claims to offer significantly more accurate glucose readings in a range of 30-500 mg/dl. The implanted Glucose Biosensor continuously monitors blood glucose without the need for finger sticks. The most accurate glucose monitor available, the implanted biosensor can be programmed to monitor blood glucose according to a predetermined schedule, thus eliminating problems of patient compliance. The sensor alarms for dangerous, life threatening conditions such as hypoglycemia.

GlucoLight Corporation is developing a low-cost non-invasive blood glucose monitor for home use by diabetic patents. GlucoLight's unique optical approach, microScatterTM (microscatter) technology, is based on patented technologies in the area of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Low Coherence Interferometry (LCI). There is a working prototype with published clinical data on healthy volunteers.

The GlucoWatch G2 Biographer was approved to detect glucose level trends and track patterns in people with diabetes. It must be used along with conventional blood glucose monitoring of blood samples. The device, which looks like a wristwatch, pulls body fluid from the skin using small electric currents. It can provide six measurements per hour for 13 hours. (See David Mendosa's review).

San Antonio Express-News columnist Jonathan Gurwitz has written a piece that I first spotted in my local paper, but that you can read by visiting the paper's website. Gurwitz urges parents to get their kids into the great outdoors this summer. Heck, even the backyard would be better than sitting around in the house watching tv. What upset Gurwitz was a report in the authoritative medical journal Lancet in which it was recently reported that kids get double the exercise playing outside than if they were inside. "In other health news," says Gurwitz a tad sarcastically, "breathing is good for you and eating less might help you lose weight. How has it come to this?"

You know, he is absolutely right. It's sad that parents need to be reminded that kids need exercise and that the best way for them to get it is just to let 'em out of the house. It's about keeping them active, simple as that. In an era when kids are developing Type 2 diabetes at unprecedented rates, this is a parent's first line of defense in raising healthy children. Do whatever you have to do. Unplug the tv and computer and tell 'em they broke!