Affecting 425 million people worldwide. Currently, there is no radical method to cure diabetes. The disease is mainly controlled by regulating blood glucose levels, and the quality of blood glucose control is reflected by testing the blood glucose.
Diabetes testing strip is a disposable material and coated with a biological enzyme and used with a diabetes testing machine. At this time, the diabetes testing strips come packed together in a cylinder container with a lid. After opening the package and taking out a piece of test strip, if the lid is not closed properly in time, moisture may enter the package and make the unused test strip defective, causing the test results to be inaccurate and affecting the treatment of patients. In order to avoid this situation, more and more brands are beginning to use individually packed diabetics strips, which is convenient for consumers to carry and is safer for storage. However, some of the manufacturers had problems in the selection of desiccant.
One of our clients also had this problem. Their product requirements are to keep the relative humidity in the test strip packaging within 25℃, RH20% and the shelf life is 1 year. Currently, the glucose oxidase testing strips are independently packaged with a traditional composite aluminum film. The package size is 25*50mm (sealing edge width 5mm), and the drop in desiccant is implemented. As a result, the surface of the package is uneven, enduring a poor appearance, while some of the testing strips crushed and become defective. In order to solve this problem, the customer came to our research and development center for a solution.
As the testing strip is packaged with disposable individual packaging, and the volume is quite small, the traditional drop-in desiccant is not suitable. Therefore, we recommended using the aluminum desiccant film newly developed by WiseSorbent® as the independent packaging material for testing strips. Aluminum desiccant film is not just a regular aluminum film, but a type of functional packaging material containing a desiccative layer of active adsorption material (molecular sieve) which can improve the stability of the test strip during storage. At the same time, no additional desiccant is needed, which improves the safety and appearance of the test strip packaging.
The causes of moisture in the package include the moisture entering at the time of product was packaged, the moisture contained in the test strip itself, and the moisture that enters the package during storage.
It is concluded that the effective desiccative area (excluding sealing edge) of the required aluminum desiccant film is 0.0010m2, and the actual desiccative area is 0.0012m2, which meets the requirements.
Set the button temperature and humidity recorder to record temperature and humidity data every 10min. The blood the testing strip and control temperature and humidity recorder were packaged in 25*50mm traditional four edge sealed traditional aluminum film bag and four edge sealed aluminum desiccant film bag respectively in two groups to simulate the worse packaging environment. Packaging the product under the condition of 24℃，RH50%. Place the sealed packages in a constant temperature and humidity chamber that is set to 25℃, rh90%.
According to the test verification, using the aluminum desiccant film as the packaging of blood glucose test strip reduces the humidity rate to 25℃, RH20% within 120 minutes, and the humidity rate keeps stable at around RH 10% at last, which meets the customer’s use requirement of 25℃ and RH20%.
After using the desiccant packaging solution provided by Wisesorbent, there was no damage caused by moisture to the test strip during the storage process, and the shelf-life of the product was also greatly guaranteed. The testing strip and related products of this brand have also become the first choice for hospitals and patients. The customer’s R&D director said: “it is our responsibility to provide patients with required standards and that we do not make a single mistake in the quality of products. The WiseSorbent® R&D is very professional in desiccants and provided us a strong guarantee for the quality of our products and let us win the trust of our consumers.”
