MEDICAL tattoos could provide a new way of delivering real-time health monitoring, researchers from the University of Montreal's Faculty of Pharmacy believe.
Presenting their research at the International Pharmaceutical Federation's (FIP) Seventh Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress yesterday, the team from the University of Montreal said the "tattoos" placed into the skin using mirconeedles, can deliver an agent which provides a fluorescent signal that could be measured using a portable detector for point-of-care or home-based monitoring of health conditions.
The researchers told the Congress they had developed dissolving microneedles, formulated an agent compatible for delivery using the microneedles, and could measure the rate of lymphatic drainage, an indicator of lymphoedema.
PhD student at the University's Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Micro and Nanotechnology, Sam Babity, said further investigation with agents that react with physiological analytes in the skin, such as reactive oxygen species, which is an indicator or inflammation), was ongoing.
"The skin - the largest organ in the human body - carries a great deal of health-related information, and microneedles could help us to access this," he said.
Babity and his colleague, Davide Brambilla, noted microneedles offer painless delivery and sampling to and from the dermal layer, and can be used to embed specifically designed diagnostic agents in the dermal layer to allow real-time monitoring of various health parameters.
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