Do not be perturbed if your test strip for blood glucose shows unearthly numbers for the FDA on Wednesday announced that they would be recalling certain test strips for one of its blood-glucose meters as they appear faulty.
These strips manufactured by the German drug maker Bayer AG showed sugar readings that are too-high by about 5% to 17%. These strips are the ones made specifically for Bayer's Contour TS Blood Glucose Meter and not those used for other meters such as Bayer's Ascensia Breeze2 and the Ascensia Contour.
The inaccurate readings made by certain batches were identified during a routine quality check and the Bayer Diabetes Care insists that these defects are inly in the strips and not the meter. They attribute these faults to certain recently used equipment intended for the new Contour TS strips.
The recall affected up to 230,000 bottles of strips, each, typically, containing around 10, 25, or 50 strips. The batches that have been recalled all begin with WK and have the characters 7D, 7E, 7F, or 7G in the third and fourth position. The lot numbers can be found on the bottom of the box and on the side of the bottle.
These Contour TS strips are sold through mail order in order in the United States and have also been distributed in the U.S., Austria, France, India, Korea, Mexico, and Turkey. People who have received the defective strips can contact Bayer customer service (in the U.S., 1-800-348-8100) for a replacement. Details about the strips' product code and lot numbers have been posted on the FDA's Web site.
These high readings may cause diabetic patients to give themselves excess insulin which could be dangerous or even fatal. However there have been no reports of injuries or deaths as a result of the faulty readings so far.
Source-Medindia
SRM/M
