Question

An elderly female patient would urinate every 20 minutes and would always feel exhausted and extreme thirst. On consultation with her doctor she was advised to cut off on carbohydrates and follow a good exercise routine as she was discovered to be pre-diabetic. Yesterday as everyone was home due to Coronavirus lockdown, her daughter prepared a cake from ready to make cake mixture which was labelled “sugar-free”. At night, the elderly lady felt fatigue, severe headache and vision problem. She was rushed to the hospital, and the doctor asked her daughter to bring the sample of the cake her mom had in lunch. If you are a lab technician in the hospital lab and you are supposed to find out the main ingredients of the cake causing those symptoms in the elderly lady, which tests will you perform to:

1. Verify whether the cake she ate was true sugar-free or not?

2. Give the details of the type of sugar (if any).

3. How would you verify (check) if any other ingredient of cake has caused her the symptoms?

4. What negative control will you use in these tests? Prepare a scientific report to inform the patient’s daughter with the results of your analysis.

these report include: introduction and answer the questions in paragraphs

Answer 1

Answer:

1) To verify whether the cake she ate was sugar free or not, a sample of cake has to be taken and Benedict's reagent test has to be applied to know if sugar is present.If this test is positive, it indicates presence of sugar.

2) If a sugar is present in the sample, then it can either be monosaccharide ,disaccharide or polysaccharide.

3)To verify if any other ingredient of cake has caused her these symptoms, she should have a blood test, complete blood count to know if any pathogen has entered her body through cake that would have been contaminated.

Also her blood glucose levels are to be tested, to know the actual cause of her symptoms.

4)Insulin can be used as negative control for bood sugar testing.