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• Posted August 4, 2026

New Smart Ring Can Track Blood Sugar, Alcohol

An experimental ring might one day help people with diabetes track their glucose levels, a new study says.

The “smart ring” continuously monitors up to four different chemical biomarkers found in finger sweat, researchers reported recently in Nature Communications.

The full list includes glucose, ketones, vitamin C, uric acid, lactate and alcohol, their paper says.

“A ring capturing dynamic molecular information in real time would be extremely useful for making informed decisions regarding health, diet and lifestyle,” senior researcher Joseph Wang said in a news release. 

“For example, the ring’s ability to track both glucose and ketone continuously and simultaneously would greatly benefit optimal insulin dosing for the management of diabetes,” Wang said. He is a professor of chemical and nano engineering at the University of California-San Diego.

Testing on healthy individuals and people with type 1 diabetes showed that the new ring can track blood sugar and ketones about as well as commercial glucose monitors and blood meters, researchers said.

Current smart rings on the market like the Oura Ring can track health signatures like skin temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen levels, researchers said.

But those rings can’t track chemicals found in body fluids, researchers noted.

“Commercial rings only provide biophysical information, but they lack molecular information about biochemical markers that offers deeper insights about an individual’s health status,” lead investigator Tamoghna Saha, a postdoctoral researcher in Wang’s lab, said in a news release.

The experimental ring contains biomarker sensing technology, low-power electronics and a flexible battery, researchers said.

Without the need for exercise or active sweating, the ring passively absorbs sweat using a specially designed hydrogel that works similar to how water travels from soil into the leaves of plants, researchers said. The collected sweat is analyzed by a sensor array inside the ring, and results are sent wirelessly to a smartphone app.

The ring is powered by a rechargeable battery that supplies power for up to 12 hours between charges.

“Such integration onto the small footprint of a ring form factor is amazing,” Wang said.

The next step will be to make the ring more waterproof, so it can be worn throughout the day, researchers said. The electronics and hydrogel also can be improved to allow for better monitoring across multiple days.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on monitoring blood sugar.

SOURCE:  University of California-San Diego, news release, July 24, 2026