✕
Get authentic, real-time news that helps you fight COVID-19 better.
Install for doctors. It's free.
Install for doctors. It's free.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed flexible sensors that can be worn on the skin to sensitively track vitamin C levels in sweat.
The new devices consist of an adhesive patch that a user can attach to their skin. By stimulating sweating in the underlying skin, the sensors can generate enough sweat to analyze for vitamin C levels.
The flexible structure contains an enzyme, ascorbate oxidase, that converts vitamin C to dehydroascorbic acid, consuming oxygen in the process. This generates an electrical current that flexible electrodes within the devices can sense, providing a data readout that is proportional to the level of vitamin C present in the sweat.
So far, the researchers have tested the sensors in human volunteers and found that they could sensitively track levels of vitamin C over a couple of hours. The sensors successfully detected changes in vitamin C levels when the volunteers drank fruit juice or took a vitamin C supplement.
If shown to be useful in the context of COVID-19, the new sensors could help clinicians to monitor and optimize vitamin C levels depending on their patients’ needs. In terms of more routine use, the sensors have significant potential in helping people to make dietary and nutritional changes.
Source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssensors.0c00604
The new devices consist of an adhesive patch that a user can attach to their skin. By stimulating sweating in the underlying skin, the sensors can generate enough sweat to analyze for vitamin C levels.
The flexible structure contains an enzyme, ascorbate oxidase, that converts vitamin C to dehydroascorbic acid, consuming oxygen in the process. This generates an electrical current that flexible electrodes within the devices can sense, providing a data readout that is proportional to the level of vitamin C present in the sweat.
So far, the researchers have tested the sensors in human volunteers and found that they could sensitively track levels of vitamin C over a couple of hours. The sensors successfully detected changes in vitamin C levels when the volunteers drank fruit juice or took a vitamin C supplement.
If shown to be useful in the context of COVID-19, the new sensors could help clinicians to monitor and optimize vitamin C levels depending on their patients’ needs. In terms of more routine use, the sensors have significant potential in helping people to make dietary and nutritional changes.
Source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssensors.0c00604
1 / 1
Dr. S●●●●●a S●●●●a and 6 others like this2 shares
Like
Comment
Share
Dr. S●●●●●m S●●●●y P●●●●●l General Medicine
Useful research in a partial sense. The full potential is yet to be met.
May 23, 2020Like
