Posted on Jan 11, 2011
At the end of 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of "359 different lots of glucose test strips" manufactured by Abbott Diabetes Care and marketed under the brand names Precision Xceed Pro, Precision Xtra, Medisense Optium, Optium, Optium EZ and ReliOn Ultima. These strips, which are used with Abbott manufactured blood glucose monitoring systems, have been failing to absorb enough blood for accurate monitoring of patient's blood glucose levels. The FDA says that the recalled strips may be giving "falsely low blood glucose results. False results may lead patients to try to raise their blood glucose unnecessarily, or they may fail to treat elevated blood glucose because of a false, low reading. Both scenarios pose risks to a patient's health." The test strips in question were manufactured between January and September of last year and online and in retail or pharmaceutical stores. The FDA is saying that exposure to warm weather or prolonged storage may cause these strips to have a higher rate of false results.