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Now, tattoo can watch your blood sugar level
Washington: Massachusettsbased Draper Laboratories is trying to develop a special tattoo ink that changes colour based on glucose levels inside the skin.
Nanotechnology researchers associated with the project believe that the injectable ink may one day prove helpful in freeing diabetics from painful blood glucose tests. "It doesn't have to be a large, overthe-shoulder kind of tattoo. It would only have to be a few millimetres in size and wouldn't have to go as deep as a normal tattoo", Discovery News quoted Heather Clark, a scientist at Draper, as saying.
She has revealed that her team did not actually set out to create a glucose-detecting ink. "At first I didn't even think it was possible", she said.
Clark said she and her colleagues originally created a sodium-sensitive ink to monitor heart health, advancing basic knowledge of electrolytes in the body, or to ensure athletes are properly hydrated. It was only after talking to a colleague that she decided to give glucose detection a try, and modified the system to detect glucose. The ink particles are tiny spheres about 120 nanometers across, inside which are three parts: the glucose detecting molecule, a colour-changing dye, and a molecule that mimics glucose.
If the molecules mostly latch onto glucose, the ink appears yellow. If glucose levels are low, the molecule latches onto the glucose mimic, turning the ink purple. A healthy level of glucose has a "funny orangey" colour. According to Clark, the sampling process repeats itself every few milliseconds.
The tattoo would let diabetics know if an abnormally high or low reading was either returning to a normal level or getting worse. ANI
Nanotechnology researchers associated with the project believe that the injectable ink may one day prove helpful in freeing diabetics from painful blood glucose tests. "It doesn't have to be a large, overthe-shoulder kind of tattoo. It would only have to be a few millimetres in size and wouldn't have to go as deep as a normal tattoo", Discovery News quoted Heather Clark, a scientist at Draper, as saying.
She has revealed that her team did not actually set out to create a glucose-detecting ink. "At first I didn't even think it was possible", she said.
Clark said she and her colleagues originally created a sodium-sensitive ink to monitor heart health, advancing basic knowledge of electrolytes in the body, or to ensure athletes are properly hydrated. It was only after talking to a colleague that she decided to give glucose detection a try, and modified the system to detect glucose. The ink particles are tiny spheres about 120 nanometers across, inside which are three parts: the glucose detecting molecule, a colour-changing dye, and a molecule that mimics glucose.
If the molecules mostly latch onto glucose, the ink appears yellow. If glucose levels are low, the molecule latches onto the glucose mimic, turning the ink purple. A healthy level of glucose has a "funny orangey" colour. According to Clark, the sampling process repeats itself every few milliseconds.
The tattoo would let diabetics know if an abnormally high or low reading was either returning to a normal level or getting worse. ANI
INKY INDICATOR: The special tattoo ink will turn yellow if there are excess sugar molecules under your skin
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