Chronic stress can lead to greater blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, decreased immune function, depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, the tools we use to monitor stress are often imprecise or expensive, depending on self -informers and psychiatric evaluations.
Now, an interdisciplinary engineer from TUFTS and his equipment has devised a simple device using specially designed dental thread that can easily measure and precise cortisol, a stress hormone, in real time.
“It began in a collaboration with several departments in TUFTS, examining how stress and other cognitive states affect the resolution and learning of problems,” said Sameer Sonkusale, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “We did not want the measurement to create an additional source of stress, so we think, can we make a detection device that becomes part of its daily routine? Cortisol is a stress marker that is found in saliva, so the dental thread seemed a natural adjustment to take a daily sample.”
Its design of a dental dental thread that stops saliva resembles a selection of common dental thread, with the string stretched through two tips that extend from a flat plastic handle, all the size of its index finger. The saliva is collected by capillary action through a very narrow channel in the dental thread. The fluid is drawn in the selection handle and a United tab, where it extends through electrodes that detect cortisol.
Cortisol recognition in electrodes is achieved with a remarkable technology developed almost 30 years ago called molecularly printed electropolimerized polymers (EMIP). They work in a similar way to the way you could make a plaster mold of your hand. A polymer is formed around a template molecule, in this case Cortisol, which is then eliminated to leave the union sites behind. These sites have a physical and chemical “memory” of the target molecule so that they can join the free flotation molecules that are entering.
EMIP molds are versatile, so dental thread sensors can be created that detect other molecules that can be found in saliva, such as estrogen for fertility monitoring, glucose for diabetes monitoring or cancer markers. There is also the possibility of detecting multiple biomarkers in saliva at the same time, for more precise stress monitoring, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other conditions.
“The Emip approach is a change of play,” said Sonkusale. “Biosensors have typically developed using antibodies or other receptors that choose the molecule of interest. Once a marker is found, a lot of work has to go to the bioengineering of the receiving molecule attached to the sensor. EMIP does not depend on many investments to make antibodies or recipients. If you discover a new marker or any other disease, you can create a large amount of a large amount of a polo in the cinema in the cinema in the cinema in the cinema in the cinema in the cinema. The summons. “
The precision of cortisol sensors is comparable to better market or development sensors. Bringing this device to the home and in the hands of people without training will make it possible to fold stress monitoring in many aspects of medical care. Currently, Sonkusale and his colleagues are creating a startup to try to take the product to the market.
He points out that while the dental thread sensor is quantitatively highly precise, the practice of tracing markers in saliva is better for monitoring, not for the initial diagnosis of a condition. That is partly due to the fact that saliva markers can still have variations among individuals.
“For the diagnosis, the blood remains the gold standard, but once they diagnose and put medication, if you need to track, for example, a cardiovascular condition over time to see if the health of the heart is improving, then monitoring with the sensor can be easy and allows appropriate interventions when necessary,” he says.
New research, published in the magazine ACS MATERIALS AND INTERFACES APPLIEDIt adds to a series of sensor innovations based on Sonkusale threads and its research team, including sensors that can detect gases, metabolites in sweat or movement when they are embedded in clothing and transistors that can be intertwined on flexible electronic devices.