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Printable nanoparticles track vitamins, hormones, and drugs in sweat

Feb. 03, 2025.
2 mins. read. 2 Interactions

Engineers have used printable nanoparticles to make sweat sensors that can track vitamins, hormones, and drugs in real time.

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Giulio Prisco

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Giulio Prisco is Senior Editor at Mindplex. He is a science and technology writer mainly interested in fundamental science and space, cybernetics and AI, IT, VR, bio/nano, crypto technologies.

In the future, medicine could be very personalized, giving each person exactly what they need to stay healthy. This means doctors must constantly check certain health markers. Engineers at Caltech have found a new way to do this using inkjet printing to make long-lasting sweat sensors. These sensors can track vitamins, hormones, and drugs in real time without needles.

These tiny sensors use special nanoparticles printed onto patches you wear. They’ve been tested on people with long COVID and cancer patients at City of Hope.

The Caltech engineers have described the methods and results of this study in a paper published in Nature Materials.

The nanoparticles that the Caltech engineers have used are like little cubes with a special coating. They trap a molecule, like vitamin C, inside them. Then, they release it, leaving holes that only fit that molecule again. When sweat or another fluid meets these cubes, it creates an electrical signal. If the molecule from your body fits into the hole, it blocks this signal, showing how much of that molecule is there.

The cubes have a core made of nickel hexacyanoferrate, which makes them durable in body fluids. This allows for long-term use. The sensors can detect multiple things at once by mixing different types of nanoparticles in one patch.

Applications to health monitoring and personalized medicine

For example, the engineers have made sensors for vitamin C, tryptophan, and creatinine, which are important for long COVID studies. They also made sensors for cancer drugs, helping to adjust doses for patients. These sensors could even be placed under the skin for monitoring.

This technology promises a future where doctors can tailor treatments more precisely to each patient’s needs, potentially improving health outcomes for many conditions.

Wei Gao, a medical engineering professor at Caltech, says in a Caltech press release that this could change how we monitor many health conditions.

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