title: 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 inferior in critical error Zone D, and OneTouch Select was significantly inferior in the clinically unimportant error Zone B. Accu-Chek Go, Optium Xceed, and Contour TS had similar performances and were significantly better than the other two HGMs according to error grid analysis or International Organization for Standardization criteria. The in vitro tests were consistent with the above clinical data. The capillary and venous consistencies of Accu-Chek Go and OneTouch Select were better than the other HGMs.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present results show that not all the HGMs are accurate enough in low blood glucose levels. The patients and the caregivers should be aware of these restrictions of the HGMs and give more credit to the symptoms of hypoglycemia than the values obtained by the HGMs. Finally, these results indicate that there is a need for the revision of the accuracy standards of HGMs in low blood glucose levels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Gulhane School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey. alpersonmez@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Alper
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sonmez
authors.forename: Zeynep
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
authors.forename: Gokhan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Uckaya
authors.forename: Selim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kilic
authors.forename: Serkan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tapan
authors.forename: Abdullah
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Taslipinar
authors.forename: Aydogan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aydogdu
authors.forename: Mahmut
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yazici
authors.forename: Mahmut Ilker
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
authors.forename: Muhittin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Serdar
authors.forename: M Kemal
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Erbil
authors.forename: Mustafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kutlu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis*; D015190:Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007003:Hypoglycemia / Q000097:blood*; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose