The fingertip blood collection technique is a commonly used diagnostic tool for the monitoring of glycaemic control in both exercise and clinical settings as it is thought to provide a rapid, non-invasive analysis of circulating whole blood glucose concentrations (Ellison et al, 2002). The aim of this study was to compare the sensitivity of the fingertip collection technique and the efficacy of its use for the estimation of blood glucose disposal following a single bout of exercise and an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) in healthy male subjects. Six male (age 22.2 ± 0.47 years; BMI 27.3 ± 0.9 kg/m²; mean ± SE), glucose tolerant individuals (HbA1c 5.1 ± 0.1%; 2h OGTT venous glucose concentration 4.8 ± 0.2 mmol/l) participated in this investigation. Experimental procedures were approved by the East Sussex Local Research Ethics committee and conducted in accordance to the revised declaration of Helsinki. Subjects were studied in the fasted state and during two 75g Oral Glucose Tolerance Tests (OGTT). The first at rest and the second immediately following one hour of exercise at a power output corresponding to 90% of a pre-determined lactate threshold (LT). A cannula was inserted into a superficial dorsal hand vein and placed in a temperature regulated Perspex box maintaining the hand at ~60°C for collection of arterialised blood (Zello et al, 1990) and a second into the contralateral antecubital vein for venous blood sampling. Arterialised (A) (5ml), venous (V) (5ml) and fingertip (F) (~250μL) blood was sampled every 10 minutes. Whole blood samples were immediately analysed for glucose using the glucose oxidase method (YSI, Yellow Springs, CA). A repeated measure ANOVA was conducted to assess differences between sample sites and conditions. There were no differences observed in glucose concentrations across the three sample sites following exercise or glucose ingestion. The rate constants (k=min^-1) calculated from the plot of log glucose versus time from peak glucose during each OGTT showed a significant difference (P<0.01) in fingertip glucose disposal during the rest and exercise trials (Table 1). Our results suggest that the fingertip collection method offers a valid diagnostic tool for quantifying glucose disposal during exercise. However, at rest it may provide an invalid estimation of glucose disposal.