Flossing Got You Stressed? This Pick-Sensor Can Quantify That in Minutes
Designed for non-invasive monitoring, this 3D-printed floss pick tracks your stress levels as you clean your teeth.
Researchers from Tufts University have developed a 3D-printed flosser with a difference: it includes a built-in sensor that can work out how stressed you are.
"On-demand dental-floss-based point-of-care platform is developed for the non-invasive and real-time quantification of salivary cortisol utilizing redox-molecule embedded molecularly imprinted polymer structures and thread microfluidics," the team explains of its creation. "Herein, we explore the high-surface-area graphene-based electrode substrate for electrochemically synthesizing selective cortisol MIPs [Molecularly Imprinted Polymer-based sensors] and integrate it with thread microfluidics to build a highly sensitive cortisol-sensing platform for stress monitoring."
Flossing is something that anyone with teeth should be performing regularly, which makes it ideal as a place to hang an additional routine — in this case, ongoing monitoring of stress hormone concentration. Where traditional sensing would require the user to perform some additional action, and thus be likely to forget or skip the monitoring, the team's 3D-printed dental-pick is designed to integrate the sensing directly into an existing habit so it's never forgotten — or at least, not as often as flossing itself.
The 3D-printed pick holds a length of floss and aids with getting it between the teeth, like any other. Once there, though, it wicks saliva into an integrated electrochemical sensor designed to react to cortisol — and a portable potentiostat device pushes against the body of the pick to read the sensor, transmitting the readings to a smartphone over a Bluetooth connection.
In testing, the sensor proved able to detect cortisol levels as low as 0.048pg ml⁻¹ — though the reaction time means that while detection happens in real-time, the reading isn't ready for around 11 to 12 minutes. "For the human saliva sample (as part of the stress study), the platform showed a high correlation (r = 0.9910) against conventional ELISA [cortisol detection] assays," the researchers say. "Combined with a wireless readout, this saliva floss offers a convenient way to monitor daily stress levels. It can be extended to detect other critical salivary biomarkers with high sensitivity and selectivity in complex environments."
The team's work has been published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, under closed-access terms.