TUESDAY, March 18, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Continuous glucose monitors don’t just help people with diabetes maintain healthy blood sugar levels, a new study says — the devices also can help them be safer drivers.
Diabetics who use glucose monitors have fewer incidents involving low blood sugar, researchers reported in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.
As a result, the patients are more confident while driving and potentially at less risk for a traffic accident, researchers said.
“Continuous glucose monitors with low-glucose alerts can potentially reduce the risk of hypoglycemia for insulin-treated drivers,” senior researcher Dr. Hiroshi Arima, a professor of endocrinology and diabetes at Nagoya University in Japan, said in a news release.
“By monitoring glucose levels by continuous glucose monitors, most hypoglycemic attacks could be avoided even when driving,” he said. “Such systems are expected to make driving safer for people with diabetes.”
Nearly 72% of people with type 1 diabetes have had a hypoglycemic episode while driving, and about 4% have had an accident due to a blood sugar crash behind the wheel, a 2023 U.S. study in Diabetes Care found.
For the new study, researchers recruited people taking insulin for diabetes who drive cars at least three times a week in Japan.
The participants spent four weeks using continuous glucose monitors with active low-glucose alerts, and another four weeks where the monitors were used without active alerts.
Hypoglycemia while driving occurred much less often during the active alert period, about 19% compared with 33% when people weren’t receiving active alerts.
In addition, nearly two-thirds of the participants (63%) said the low-glucose alerts increased their confidence while driving.
“These systems are expected to make driving safer for people with diabetes,” researchers wrote.
However, that they noted that current glucose monitoring systems aren’t fully optimized for driving.
“Many participants expressed a desire for alerts that integrate with car navigation systems or provide voice alerts,” researchers wrote.
“In the future, it would be desirable for low-glucose alert functions to be integrated into such systems, allowing for safe notifications to drivers or vehicle control in response to hypoglycemia,” the team added.
More information
The American Diabetes Association has more on unsafe driving with diabetes.
SOURCES: Nagoya University, news release, March 9, 2025; Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, Feb, 27, 2025
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