Increasing the Low-Glucose Alarm of a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System Prevents Exercise-Induced Hypoglycemia Without Triggering Any False Alarms

Abstract

The use of continuous glucose monitoring systems (CGMSs) with low-glucose alarms is advocated as a means to decrease the risk of hypoglycemia in type 1 diabetes. Unfortunately, marked mismatches between CGMS readings and actual blood glucose (BG) concentrations limit the usefulness of CGMS in preventing hypoglycemia (1). Although we showed recently that raising the alarm level to compensate for this mismatch decreases the incidence and duration of hypoglycemic episodes, this results in an unacceptably high rate of false alarms (1), defined as an alarm triggered when BG levels are greater than the alarm threshold. This is an important issue because repeated exposure to false alarms can discourage individuals from using their CGMSs (2). Given that CGMSs overestimate BG levels when they rapidly decline (3,4), we propose that raising the CGMS alarm …