Soon flossing won’t be critical in just avoiding tooth decay, it will be vital in providing early warning signs of conditions like heart disease, cancer and chronic stress.
Engineers at Tufts University, in the United States, have developed a dental floss that can accurately measure molecules in saliva.
Professor Sameer Sonkusale said the work started as a collaboration with several departments to examine how stress and other cognitive states affected problem solving and learning.
Professor Sonkusale said a by-prodouct of the work was a simple device, using specially designed floss, that could easily and accurately measure cortisol, a stress hormone, in real time.
“We didn’t want measurement to create an additional source of stress, so we thought, can we make a sensing device that becomes part of your day-to-day routine? Cortisol is a stress marker found in saliva, so flossing seemed like a natural fit to take a daily sample.”
He said the design of a saliva-sensing dental floss looked just like a common floss pick.
“The saliva is picked up by capillary action through a very narrow channel in the floss. The fluid is drawn into the pick handle and an attached tab, where it spreads across electrodes that detect the cortisol.”
Professor Sonkusale said the technology used is versatile, so dental floss sensors could be created that detected other molecules found in saliva, such as estrogen for fertility tracking, glucose for diabetes monitoring, or markers for cancer.
“There is also potential for detecting multiple biomarkers in saliva at the same time, for more accurate monitoring of stress, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other conditions.”
Read the full study: Saliva-Sensing Dental Floss: An Innovative Tool for Assessing Stress via On-Demand Salivary Cortisol Measurement with Molecularly Imprinted Polymer and Thread Microfluidics Integration.
