Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Newly developed smartwatch measures key stress hormone cortisol

Amazing stuff! Become your own doctor!

"... To date, it has been impractical to [continuously] measure cortisol as a way to potentially identify conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress, in which levels of the hormone are elevated. Cortisol levels traditionally have been evaluated through blood samples by professional labs, and while those measurements can be useful for diagnosing certain diseases, they fail to capture changes in cortisol levels over time. ...
Now, a UCLA research team has developed a device that could be a major step forward: a smartwatch that assesses cortisol levels found in sweat — accurately, noninvasively and in real time. ...
In the new smartwatch, a strip of specialized thin adhesive film collects tiny volumes of sweat, measurable in millionths of a liter. An attached sensor detects cortisol using engineered strands of DNA, called aptamers, which are designed so that a cortisol molecule will fit into each aptamer like a key fits a lock. When cortisol attaches, the aptamer changes shape in a way that alters electric fields at the surface of a transistor. ..."

From the abstract:
"Wearable technologies for personalized monitoring require sensors that track biomarkers often present at low levels. Cortisol—a key stress biomarker—is present in sweat at low nanomolar concentrations. Previous wearable sensing systems are limited to analytes in the micromolar-millimolar ranges. To overcome this and other limitations, we developed a flexible field-effect transistor (FET) biosensor array that exploits a previously unreported cortisol aptamer coupled to nanometer-thin-film In2O3 FETs. Cortisol levels were determined via molecular recognition by aptamers where binding was transduced to electrical signals on FETs. ... the development and on-body validation of an aptamer-FET array–based smartwatch equipped with a custom, multichannel, self-referencing, and autonomous source measurement unit enabling seamless, real-time cortisol sweat sensing."

Sweating the small stuff: Smartwatch developed at UCLA measures key stress hormone | UCLA Device opens new possibilities for personal health monitoring




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