Color changing tattoo ink, monitor your physical condition at any time

Recently, scientists from MIT and Harvard Medical School have jointly developed a tattoo ink with biosensor function By tattooing it on the body, you can get real-time biochemical index information, such as blood sugar, acid alkalinity, sodium content, etc through the color change of the ink At present, with the high incidence of various chronic diseases, the routine test of tattoo can help people reduce the trouble of test and monitor their physical condition at any time For diabetic patients and their attending doctors, it is particularly important to detect the blood glucose level Generally, the monitoring method is to take blood several times a day to measure the blood glucose level However, due to the great differences in the blood glucose level before and after eating, it is impossible to ensure that the detection method is completely accurate With the development of technology, some methods of continuous blood glucose monitoring have emerged, but these methods usually need to puncture the instrument into the blood vessel to contact with the blood directly, and are not suitable for long-term use Different biochemical information corresponds to different color cards (source: media MIT Lab) Therefore, the research team of MIT and Harvard Medical School is dedicated to finding more convenient methods They developed four different types of biosensor inks to monitor three biochemical messages in skin fluids You only need to observe the change of tattoo color to know the pH, glucose and sodium level of the body PH sensor changes between purple and pink, glucose sensor changes between blue and brown; sodium and chromogenic pH sensor emit fluorescence under high-intensity ultraviolet light Tattoo monitoring blood glucose level (source: Analytical Chemistry) using "tattoo" to monitor biochemical indicators in the body is not the first of the research group Previously, chemists at the University of California, San Diego, had invented a "tattoo sticker" that stuck to the skin of diabetic patients, continuously and painlessly detecting their blood sugar levels This noninvasive blood glucose monitor includes an enzyme based amperometric sensor, and uses the principle of reverse ion electroosmosis to extract interstitial glucose, so as to measure the relative blood glucose concentration of human body sensitively and accurately without interference by other electrolyte compounds Compared with the traditional blood glucose measuring instrument, the experimental results confirm the accuracy and reliability of the non-invasive blood glucose monitor, and the non-invasive blood glucose monitor is more sensitive Katia Vega, the initiator of "color changing tattoo" project, thinks that this is not enough Although with the increasing speed of technological progress and the upgrading of people's demand for intelligent devices, these monitoring devices have evolved from holding type to wearing type Wearable technology will soon be replaced by intelligent devices implanted in the human body, and implantation is the future.