Exploiting Tattoos For Medical Purposes

[ramonmercado]

A novel way of delivering vaccines.

Tattoos may help deliver vaccine
By Matt McGrath
BBC News



More antibodies are created with the tattooing method
Scientists in Germany say that tattoos could be the ideal way of delivering vaccines into the body.

The researchers say that in tests undertaken with mice, tattoos were much more effective in provoking a response from the immune system.

Tattoos could be a useful way of delivering therapeutic vaccines in humans, including for some cancers.

Such vaccines have often failed to produce the expected immune response when delivered using an injection.

Vibrating needle

Tattoos have played a part in human culture for thousands of years.

Just over 100 years ago, the practice became more widely available with the invention of the electric tattoo machine in the United States. The same basic instrument is still in use to create tattoos today.

Now researchers in Germany say that the rapidly vibrating tattoo needle could be a useful way of delivering vaccines under the skin instead of insoluble ink.

In studies with mice, tattooing a vaccine produced 16 times more antibodies than a simple injection into muscle tissue.

The level of antibodies indicates the strength of the immune system's response.

Dr Martin Mueller, one of the researchers behind this work, says that the greater damage to the body caused by the tattoo needle may explain the better immune response.

The scientists say that the tattoo needles would never be suitable for preventative vaccines, such as measles, in children as the pain would be too great.

But there may well be a role for the technique in the routine vaccination of animals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7231913.stm

 

[hallybods]

Nowt new this, the reason why many tribes tattoo is to help improve the immune system, especially with young women before they get married - some groups won't allow a girl to get hitched without her being marked. It's so that a woman is strong enough to cope with childbirth.

 

[chockfullahate]

a famous tattooist named norman "sailor jerry" collins did this when he had cancer, tattooed the prescription drug into the affected area, whether it was any better than taking it as intended by his quack i dont know.

 

[ArthurASCII]

No-one's going to draw a big tattoo of a syringe on me!

 

[EnolaGaia]

The Germans are experimenting with tattoos again (cf. post #1). This time they're demonstrating how tattoos could be used as built-in monitors or sensors for certain biochemical characteristics.

Tattooing and the art of sensing within the skin

The art of tattooing may have found a diagnostic twist. A team of scientists in Germany have developed permanent dermal sensors that can be applied as artistic tattoos. A colorimetric analytic formulation was injected into the skin instead of tattoo ink. The pigmented skin areas varied their color when blood pH or other health indicators changed. ...

Using tattoos for diagnostic rather than cosmetic purposes is a new concept. Researcher Ali K. Yetisen, who works at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and his colleagues thought the technique could be helpful to place sensor formulations at spots in the body where they can record changes in metabolic substances directly, without any spatial distance or time delay, and perhaps for a very long period of time.

The researchers then identified and adapted three colorimetric chemical sensors that produce a color change in response to biomarkers. The first sensor was a rather simple pH indicator consisting of the dyes methyl red, bromothymol blue, and phenolphthalein. If injected into a model skin patch -- a piece of pig skin -- the resulting tattoo turned from yellow to blue if the pH was adjusted from five to nine.

The other two sensors probed the levels of glucose and albumin. Albumin is a carrier and transport protein in the blood. High glucose levels in the body may indicate diabetic dysfunction, whereas falling albumin levels can indicate liver or kidney failure. The glucose sensor consisted of the enzymatic reactions of glucose oxidase and peroxidase, which, depending on the glucose concentration, led to a structural change of an organic pigment, and a yellow to dark green color change. The albumin sensor was based on a yellow dye that, upon association with the albumin protein, turned green. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190718112502.htm

 

[EnolaGaia]

The full bibliographic data on the published paper associated with the biosensor tattoo research can be found here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201904416

Here's the abstract ...

Tattooing is a ubiquitous body modification involving the injection of ink and/or dye pigments into the dermis. Biosensors in the form of tattoos can be used to monitor metabolites in interstitial fluid. Here, minimally invasive, injectable dermal biosensors were developed for measuring pH, glucose, and albumin concentrations. The dermal pH sensor was based on methyl red, bromothymol blue, and phenolphthalein, which responded to a pH range from 5.0 to 9.0. The dermal glucose sensor consisted of glucose oxidase, 3,3′,5,5′‐tetramethylbenzidine, and peroxidase that detected concentrations up to 50.0 mmol L−1. The dermal albumin sensor consisted of 3′,3′′,5′,5′′‐tetrachlorophenol‐3,4,5,6‐tetrabromosulfophthalein to measure concentrations up to 5.0 g L−1. The sensors were multiplexed in ex vivo skin tissue and quantitative readouts were obtained using a smartphone camera. These sensors can be used to manage of acid–base homeostasis, diabetes, and liver failure in point‐of‐care settings.