Testing ear leak fluid (suspected CSF fluid) for glucose with test strips?

[miagracie]

Okay,

I have repeatedly tried to test my ear leak fluid with a diabetes blood sugar meter. I can’t seem to get enough for the very picky meter.

Per this article, glucose meters can miss the glucose in CSF and give false negatives as well

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14719513

I was mentioning to my husband, how there had to be some sort of paper or strip that would work. He mentioned something we read in the very valuable book by diabetes guru Dr. Richard K. Bernstein (the guy who put the blood sugar meter in the hands of the public, read his Wikipedia if you are are diabetic-his survival as a type I patient and reversal of his kidney failure, by low carbing for normal blood sugars is amazing)…

Anyway…in his book he mentions something called Diastix he uses them I’m sure in the normal manor they are meant to be used for checking the urine for glucose. But he primarily appears to use them to test food in restraunts, etc for hidden sugar or flour (not gluten though).

His procedure in his book is that you have to take a little bit of the food and put it in your mouth and then test it from the mix of the food and your saliva “releasing” the glucose in the food. It doesn’t work for all types of foods from what he said, not catching lactose, fructose, etc…

So…hubby had an idea-why not try that for my ear fluid leaks? Has anyone else tried a urine glucose strip on an ear and/or nose fluid leak? Before I buy a box, I wanted to see if anyone else had done this?

If I don’t hear any replies, I’ll go ahead and do it and report back. (It may take a while, my fluid leaks are sporadics.)

The leaks, for me at least, (we have an otoscope and hubby has watched this) are in an intact, non infected ear. It’s half way in my ear and he can watch a fluid bubble form as if it’s coming out of the skin pores of my ear. It’s clear and unrelated (usually) to my head and neck pain and vertigo. Although it does seem to occur more when I’m in a flair up, within a few days during or after.

I’m thinking about getting a USB otoscope to record it.

So, has anyone tried the urine glucose strips for this? Any other ideas?

Thoughts, Dr. Driscoll?

Thanks!
Mia

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