Soon, tattoos won’t just show how cool you are — they’ll also show how healthy you are.
Diabetics may soon be able to keep an eye on their glucose levels by getting tatted, all thanks to a new medical breakthrough that gives body art a possibly lifesaving purpose.
Scientists in Germany recently developed tattoos that change color in response to shifting levels of glucose, albumin or pH level in a person’s blood.
The new tattoos are still permanent, but researchers believe they could also be a simple, low-cost way to let patients with ailments such as diabetes, blood disease or kidney failure get crucial, real-time warnings about their health.
“Body modification by injecting pigments into the dermis layer is a custom more than 4,000 years old,” the researchers from the Technical University of Munich wrote in their recently published paper.
“Here, a functional cosmetic technology was developed by combining tattoo artistry and colorimetric biosensors.”
The researchers injected the colorimetric biosensors into pieces of pig skin during lab tests, instead of using tattoo ink.
Much as for regular tats, the needle punctured the epidermis, the uppermost layer of skin, and released the pigments into the dermis below, where they stained the skin permanently. The team of researchers, led by chemical engineer Ali Yetisen, identified and adapted three colorimetric chemical sensors that change hue.
For example, their pH sensor was made of the dyes methyl red, bromothymol blue and phenolphthalein. When injected into skin, the resulting tattoo turned from yellow to blue when the pH levels changed from 5 to 9.
There’s also a smartphone app the researchers developed to help people “read” the tattoos.
Instead of being purely cosmetic, the “minimally invasive” technique could “transform personalized medicine” for people with chronic diseases, the researchers wrote.
“The applications of the sensors can be extended to the detection of electrolytes, proteins, pathogenic microorganisms, gases and dehydration status,” the report said, meaning they could help with a “broad range” of issues.
The researchers haven’t tested the “biosensors” on human skin yet. Their paper was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Angewandte Chemie.
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