Hold the biosensor in your teeth
Biochemical saliva sensor for athletes
ChemPort.Ru based on materials from Chemistry World: Saliva informationResearchers from the USA have developed a sensor incorporated with a training cap (this is a flexible plastic device worn during sports training and competitions to prevent tooth injury) that can be used to monitor metabolites in saliva, providing information about the state of human health in real time.
Monitoring the main indicators of human health in real time is an attractive goal for specialists in the field of clinical, sports and military field medicine. Currently, many sensors have already been developed that can track such indicators as, for example, heart rate, but at the moment the methods that allow non-invasive determination of biomarkers in biological fluids are of the greatest interest, since such an approach can provide more detailed information about a person's condition.
Saliva is a biological fluid that is relatively easy to obtain, moreover, the content of certain biological markers in it correlates with their content in the blood, which makes it possible to use saliva as a good indicator of metabolic and hormonal indicators. Previous sensors for saliva analysis were based on applying "tattoos" to teeth, crowns or dentures, but the new sensor developed in the group of Joseph Wang from the University of California (San Diego) is much less invasive.
Wong notes that the lack of reliable wearable chemical sensors significantly hinders progress in the field of express monitoring of the general state of the body in general and the state of health in particular. The researcher is confident that the sensor developed in his group, combined with a mouth guard, can be useful for obtaining key physiological information in real time all the time while the mouth guard is in contact with saliva.
In the manufacture of the sensor, a printed electrode was used, which generates an electric current in the presence of lactate, a metabolic product that can give valuable information about the activity of the athlete's metabolism. The sensor is highly selective and remains stable in saliva for two hours.
Enzymes immobilized on the cap can generate an electrochemical response in the presence of lactates
(picture from the article in Analyst).
Dermot Diamond, an expert on biosensors from the University of Dublin (Ireland), notes that such a minimalistic and non-invasive strategy for detecting certain analytes offers a good way to monitor a person's condition, representing a good alternative to existing methods based on blood sampling for analysis.
In the future, Wong plans to work on miniaturizing the device and ensuring its greater biological compatibility for practical use.
Article by Kim et al. Non-invasive mouthguard biosensor for continuous salivary monitoring of metabolites is published in the journal Analyst.
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