A team of nanoengineers has developed and tested a temporary tattoo that offers needle-free way to monitor glucose levels in the fluid in between skin cells for patients with diabetes, providing a first-ever example of the flexible, easy-to-wear device.
Researcher Amay Bandodkar of the University of California said that this "proof-of-concept" tattoo could pave the way for the Center to explore other uses of the device, such as detecting other important metabolites in the body or delivering medicines through the skin.
At the moment, the tattoo doesn't provide the kind of numerical readout that a patient would need to monitor his or her own glucose, but this type of readout is being developed by electrical and computer engineering researchers in the Center for Wearable Sensors.
Bandodkar added that the readout instrument will also eventually have Bluetooth capabilities to send this information directly to the patient's doctor in real-time or store data in the cloud.
He noted that the research team is also working on ways to make the tattoo last longer while keeping its overall cost down, adding that presently the tattoo sensor can easily survive for a day, which are extremely inexpensive and hence can be replaced without much financial burden on the patient.
Bandodkar explained that the concentration of glucose extracted by the non-invasive tattoo device is almost hundred times lower than the corresponding level in the human blood and thus they had to develop a highly sensitive glucose sensor that could detect such low levels of glucose with high selectivity.
The researchers say the device could be used to measure other important chemicals such as lactate, a metabolite analyzed in athletes to monitor their fitness. The tattoo might also someday be used to test how well a medication is working by monitoring certain protein products in the intercellular fluid, or to detect alcohol or illegal drug consumption.
The study is published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.