An electronic tattoo will show the degree of intoxication

For the first time, a wearable device has been created that quickly determines the alcohol content in the blood

Anatoly Alizar, "Giktimes", based on UC San Diego: Flexible Wearable Electronic Skin Patch Offers A New Way to Monitor Alcohol Levels

Engineers from the University of California at San Diego have designed a very useful device. It will be useful to many men and women who are in a difficult situation for the weekend and are forced to poison the body with alcoholic beverages. The device is a flexible electronic sensor and tattoo that accurately measures the level of alcohol in the blood (by sweat secretions) and transmits information to a laptop, smartphone or other mobile device via Bluetooth.

Here and below are illustrations of the University of California, San Diego

According to the inventors, such a sensor can be used by doctors or police officers for continuous non-invasive monitoring of individual citizens who are prohibited from drinking alcohol in large quantities. In some totalitarian society, one can imagine that such tattoos will be done to all drivers when they get a license, and the car will simply refuse to start if the alcohol level in a person's blood is higher than the permitted value.

The device consists of 1) a temporary tattoo that "sticks" to the skin, stimulates sweating and determines the alcohol content electrochemically; 2) an electronic board that is attached to the tattoo with a magnet and can transmit information via Bluetooth.

The authors of the invention are Joseph Wang, Professor of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, and Patrick Mercier, Professor of Electrical Engineering.

"A large number of road accidents occur due to drunk driving. This technology provides an accurate, convenient and fast way to track the amount of alcohol consumed to prevent driving under the influence of this substance," says Professor Wang. He suggests that the car ignition system can be integrated via Bluetooth with the developed sensor. If it is not yet possible to implement such a system for all cars, but it is quite possible to put it by court order on the cars of drivers who have ever been caught driving under the influence. Perhaps this will help save human lives.

In addition to automotive use, such a device is simply useful for self-monitoring, since it clearly shows the amount of alcohol consumed. The smartphone can give a vibration or sound signal when a preset level is reached. The system will be useful for remote monitoring of husband/wife behavior or it can be used for a variety of alcoholic games and online competitions.

Usually, the alcohol content in the blood is measured using a breathalyzer based on the ethanol content in the exhaled air vapor, but this is not a very accurate test that can give false positives. For example, the measurement immediately after taking an alcoholic drink shows an inflated level compared to the actual alcohol content in the blood. In addition, such a breathalyzer can be easily deceived if you rinse your mouth before checking or use a breath freshener.

In previous years, attempts were made to develop wearable sensors that reliably measure blood alcohol levels, but these devices (SCRAM and Giner WrisTAS) had a significant drawback: too long a test time compared to standard breathalyzers (from half an hour to two hours). A compact device that monitors in real time would become extremely popular, which prompted the authors of this invention to conduct research.

The developed device contains a temporary tattoo through which pilocarpine is injected into the skin to stimulate sweating, and then the alcohol content is determined by ionophoresis and amperometry. Sweat comes into contact with an electrode coated with an alcohol oxidase enzyme, which selectively reacts to ethanol to form hydrogen peroxide, which is determined by electrochemical method.

The developed biosensor demonstrates an exceptionally selective and precise response to ethanol. The information is sent to the electronic board in the form of electrical pulses. The data is then transmitted to the mobile device via a wireless transmitter.

"What is also new in our method is that the user does not need to do physical exercises or sweat. A person installs the device, and after about 15 minutes receives readings that correlate well with the alcohol content in his blood. Until now, such devices did not exist," says Professor Mercier.

The device was tested on 9 volunteers who took different amounts of alcohol – in all cases, the readings were relatively accurate. The device works perfectly regardless of the movement of the carrier.

Now the researchers have set the task to improve the device so that it can work and measure blood alcohol content continuously for 24 hours.

The alcohol content in the blood is very important information, because human behavior and life directly depend on this concentration. The alcohol content is measured in ppm (%, thousandths of volume). For example, a concentration of 1.0% means that a liter of blood contains 1 milliliter of pure ethanol and 999 milliliters of actual blood.

The consequences of alcohol poisoning of varying severity are shown in the table.

The article by Kim et al. Noninvasive Alcohol Monitoring Using a Wearable Tattoo-Based Iontophoretic-Biosensing System is published in the journal ACS Sensors

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  24.08.2016