CAMELIA BHATTACHARYYA, AMITY UNIVERSITY KOLKATA
Almost all of us hate needles; they might not be that painful always, but our previous generation has often used the word “needles” to scare us against mischievous activities which might lead to taking a tetanus vaccine at times. From disease detection to stitches and other medical purposes, needles play a major role in the healthcare system. At times the veins of the patients might burst or roll due to these needles and this might complicate the situation. This problem has been solved very recently by researchers (only in disease detection).
Disease detection has evolved in several ways in the last few decades. Nowadays, even biomarkers are used in the detection of the disease since the immune system responds by releasing antibodies during any foreign attack. Though these biomarkers are present in both blood and the dermal interstitial fluid (ISF), the amount is more in blood, thus making it easily accessible through a needle piercing the veins. A study conducted by Srikath Singamaneni and his team at Washington University (St. Louis) has shown that the other way is also equally easy and can be absolutely painless. These can be used even by the patients without any help from the medical staff because these are microneedles that collect antibody samples from the ISF. Protein biomarkers can be leveled by using fluorescent tags; plasmonic fluor was used in the mice models for the discussed experiment to detect the functionality of the cocaine vaccine. This requires a very less amount of protein biomarker samples for accurate detection and is also cheaper.
Thus, if this technique can be used for other vaccines as well and to test the amount of antibody generated by the immune system against a pathogen, medical science would step forward yet again and evolution will create another great history.
Also read:Solvent tolerance in bacteria
SOURCE: Wang, Z., Luan, J., Seth, A. et al. Microneedle patch for the ultrasensitive quantification of protein biomarkers in intestinal fluid. Nat Biomed Eng5, 64-76 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-00672-y
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