By Hanae Armitage

由Hanae Armitage

A new wearable technology that straps right onto your wrist can provide near-real time readouts of the level of acetaminophen in your body — and likely many other drugs too.

一项新的可穿戴技术可直接绑在您的手腕上，可提供您体内对乙酰氨基酚水平的近乎实时的读数-可能还有许多其他药物。

This innovation — from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, with Stanford Medicine collaborators — could allow patients to avoid onerous pinpricks and blood draws currently needed to track the levels of a drug in their bodies.

这项创新技术是由加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校的研究人员与斯坦福大学医学博士的合作者共同开发的，它可以使患者避免繁重的针刺和抽血，以追踪目前体内药物的水平。

In addition, this kind of monitoring is right in the sweet spot for precision health and medicine, said Ron Davis, PhD, director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center. A pioneer in the field of personalized medicine, he helped conceptualize the technology.

斯坦福大学基因组技术中心主任罗恩·戴维斯 ( Ron Davis )博士说，此外，这种监测恰恰是精准健康和医学领域的最佳选择。 他是个性化医学领域的先驱，他帮助将该技术概念化。

Drugs — even the common, over-the-counter variety — are not one-dose-fits-all. Smaller adults often need less than is recommended, and a larger adult may need more. So, a quick, non-invasive way to measure an individual’s drug level would be helpful for many.

药物-甚至是常见的非处方药-都不是一刀切的药。 较小的成年人通常需要的建议量较少，而较大的成年人可能需要的量更多。 因此，一种快速，无创的​​方法来衡量个人的药物水平将对许多人有所帮助。

通过电化学活性测量药物水平 (Measuring drug levels through electrochemical activity)

The new drug-reading gadget measures something called “ pharmacokinetics,” which is essentially the rate at which a person metabolizes a drug. A paper describing the design was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was led by Sam Emaminejad, PhD, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCLA, who was formerly a graduate student and postdoctoral scholar at Stanford.

新的阅读药物的小工具测量一种叫做“ 药代动力学 ”的东西，它实质上是一个人代谢药物的速率。 最近在《 美国国家科学院院刊》上 发表了一篇描述该设计的论文 。 该研究由加州大学洛杉矶分校电气和计算机工程助理教授萨姆·埃米纳涅贾德 ( Sam Emaminejad )领导，他曾是斯坦福大学的研究生和博士后学者。

He told me that after a person takes a drug, the drug molecules appear in very low concentrations in the body, and they’re swimming among other molecules that are present in the blood at much higher concentrations.

他告诉我，一个人服用药物后，药物分子在体内的浓度很低，并且在血液中以更高浓度存在的其他分子中游动。

With acetaminophen, or certain other types of drugs, the body secretes drug-associated molecules through sweat that electroactive, meaning they exhibit a specific electrochemical signal when voltage is applied. The larger the electrochemical signal, the higher the concentration of drug in the body, Emaminejad said.

使用对乙酰氨基酚或某些其他类型的药物，人体会通过汗液分泌与药物相关的分子，这些分子具有电活性，这意味着在施加电压时它们会显示出特定的电化学信号。 Emaminejad说，电化学信号越大，体内药物的浓度越高。

The team designed a sensor that could isolate the electrochemical signal from acetaminophen or, theoretically, another target drug, while eliminating the interference of non-target molecules, Emaminejad told me. The researchers affixed this sensor to the back side of a custom-developed smartwatch.

该团队设计了一种传感器，该传感器可以从对乙酰氨基酚或理论上从另一种目标药物中分离出电化学信号，同时消除了非目标分子的干扰，Emaminejad告诉我。 研究人员将该传感器固定在定制开发的智能手表的背面。

By applying tiny amounts of voltage, the watch scans minute droplets of sweat for the signal of the target medication. Within minutes, the device translates the measured electrochemical signal to the corresponding drug concentration in the body, producing a readout. Bluetooth capability allows the data to be transmitted in almost real time and displayed on the face of the watch. All electrical activity is safely contained within the watch, so the user feels nothing.

通过施加少量的电压，手表可以扫描细小的汗珠，以获取目标药物的信号。 在几分钟之内，该设备将测得的电化学信号转换为体内相应的药物浓度，从而产生读数。 蓝牙功能使数据几乎可以实时传输并显示在表盘上。 所有电子活动都安全地包含在手表内，因此用户不会有任何感觉。

原理证明 (Proof of principle)

The researchers tested their device on two participants who had ingested acetaminophen. They compared the accuracy of the sweat sensor readout with that of a saliva test, which past studies have shown yields comparable readouts to blood tests. The scientists found that results from the sweat sensor mirrored the results of the saliva test successfully.

研究人员在两名摄入了对乙酰氨基酚的参与者身上测试了他们的设备。 他们将汗液传感器读数的准确性与唾液测试的准确性进行了比较，过去的研究表明，该读数可以产生与血液测试相当的读数。 科学家发现，汗液传感器的结果成功地反映了唾液测试的结果。

The technology is thought to be the first proof-of-principle of a wearable solution that can analyze sweat, give rapid readouts of the body’s drug concentration and construct the pharmacokinetic profile of the drug, showing things like rates of drug metabolism, said Emaminejad.

Emaminejad说，该技术被认为是可穿戴解决方案的第一原理，该解决方案可以分析汗液，快速读取人体的药物浓度并构建药物的药代动力学特征，显示出诸如药物代谢率之类的东西。

Emaminejad began working on the technology back in 2016, as he was finishing his PhD and starting his postdoctoral research in Davis’ lab. Emaminejad and Davis saw potential for this technology to help keep tabs on levels of many circulating molecules that are indicators of the body’s dynamic chemical and physiological status, as it relates to drug metabolism.

Emaminejad于2016年开始研究该技术，当时他正在完成博士学位并在戴维斯实验室开始博士后研究。 Emaminejad和Davis看到了这项技术的潜力，可以帮助控制许多循环分子的水平，这些水平是人体与药物代谢有关的动态化学和生理状态的指标。

Their latest innovation “opens up new avenues for monitoring one’s biological processes through sweat,” Davis told me.

戴维斯告诉我，他们的最新创新“为通过汗水监测一个人的生物过程开辟了新途径。”

In the future, Davis and Emaminejad hope that the sensors — or sensors like them — could be used to help people continuously monitor their health, assisting efforts to regulate blood glucose levels, adjust drug dosages or keep track of stress levels, for example.

将来，戴维斯(Davis)和埃米纳贾德(Emaminejad)希望这些传感器(或类似传感器)可以用于帮助人们不断地监测自己的健康状况，协助人们调节血糖水平，调整药物剂量或跟踪压力水平。

“I think this is just the beginning of what we can do with such wearable health monitoring technologies,” Emaminejad told me. “Now our goal is to upgrade the wearable consumer electronics into powerful health monitoring platforms, so ideally everyone could learn more information about their bodies’ physiological state and take steps to improve their health, fitness and happiness.”

“我认为这只是我们可以使用此类可穿戴健康监控技术开展工作的起点，” Emaminejad告诉我。 “现在我们的目标是将可穿戴式消费电子产品升级为功能强大的健康监测平台，以便理想地每个人都可以了解有关其身体生理状态的更多信息，并采取措施改善自己的健康，健身和幸福感。”

Photo by Jialun Zhu, Shuyu Lin and Yichao Zhao (Emaminejad Lab)

朱家伦，林书玉和赵以超摄(Emaminejad Lab)

Originally published at https://scopeblog.stanford.edu on August 21, 2020.

最初于 2020年8月21日 发布在 https://scopeblog.stanford.edu 。