Noninvasive Alcohol Monitoring Using a Wearable Tattoo-Based Iontophoretic-Biosensing System

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate a wearable tattoobased alcohol biosensing system for noninvasive alcohol monitoring in induced sweat. The skin-worn alcohol monitoring platform integrates an iontophoretic-biosensing temporary tattoo system along with flexible wireless electronics. The wearable prototype enables the transdermal delivery of the pilocarpine drug to induce sweat via iontophoresis and amperometric detection of ethanol in the generated sweat using the alcohol-oxidase enzyme and the Prussian Blue electrode transducer. The new skin-compliant biosensor displays a highly selective and sensitive response to ethanol. On-body results with human subjects show distinct differences in the current response before and after alcohol consumption, reflecting the increase of ethanol levels. The skin-worn alcohol sensor is coupled with a flexible electronics board, which controls the iontophoresis/amperometry operation and transmits data wirelessly in real time via Bluetooth communication. The new wireless epidermal iontophoretic-biosensing system offers considerable promise for noninvasive monitoring of alcohol consumption in practical settings and can be readily expanded toward the monitoring of additional analytes.

Autonomous sweat extraction and analysis applied to cystic fibrosis and glucose monitoring using a fully integrated wearable platform

“…A strong correlation between blood and sweat ethanol concentrations has been reported which could enable continuous blood-alcohol monitoring by sweat analysis (24,25). In a recent work, real-time sweat ethanol monitoring using a wearable tattoo-based iontophoreticbiosensing system has been developed (20). Sweat extracted from iontophoresis has also been shown to contain glucose levels that can accurately reflect blood glucose (26).…”

“…Wearable chemical sensors offer great opportunities for collecting physiological information at the molecular level (3,(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Recently research advances have resulted in a variety of wearable sweat sensors that can be used for real-time analysis of sweat biomarkers including electrolytes, metabolites, and heavy metals (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). We recently demonstrated a fully integrated wearable sensing system for real-time monitoring of multiple analytes in human perspiration during physical exercise which allows accurate measurement of sweat analytes through signal processing and calibration (16).…”

Stretchable biofuel cells as wearable textile-based self-powered sensors

“…Ag/AgCl ink was used to demonstrate the stretchable conductive ink as it is compatible with the elastomer and can be further integrated with electrochemical sensors as pseudo-reference 4 or iontophoretic 26 electrodes. Fig.…”

Continuous minimally-invasive alcohol monitoring using microneedle sensor arrays

“…Giner WrisTAS V) monitor the alcohol content in human perspiration by measuring the current response that corresponds to the alcohol concentration (Dumett et al, 2008). Enzyme-based electrochemical biosensors have been shown recently useful for non-invasive single alcohol measurements in iontophoretically-induced sweat (Kim et al, 2016; Gamella et al, 2014). Alcohol evaluation from ISF of human subjects has indicated a good correlation between ISF and blood alcohol levels (Venugopal et al, 2008).…”