Smart mask monitors breath for signs of health

Caltech’s Wei Gao, professor of medical engineering, and his colleagues have developed a prototype for a wise mask that could be used to observe a spread of medical conditions, including respiratory ailments, akin to asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and post-COVID-19 infections. In contrast to other smart masks being developed that monitor physical changes just like the temperature, humidity, or rate of breath, this one, called EBCare, can analyze the chemicals in a single’s breath in real time. (“EBC” is an acronym utilized in this field meaning “exhaled breath condensate.”) For instance, the mask could monitor asthma patients for levels of nitrite, a chemical that indicates airway inflammation.

“Monitoring a patient’s breath is something that’s routinely done, for instance, to evaluate asthma and other respiratory conditions. Nonetheless, this has required the patient to go to a clinic for sample collection, followed by a waiting period for lab results,” says Gao, the lead investigator of a brand new study describing the mask within the journal Science. “Since COVID-19, persons are wearing masks more. We are able to leverage this increased mask use for distant personalized monitoring to get real-time feedback about our own health in our home or office. For example, we could use this information to evaluate how well a medical treatment could also be working.”

Gao, who can be a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, has already developed a spread of wearable biosensors that analyze human sweat to measure metabolites, nutrients, hormones, and protein levels. On this case, Gao’s goal was to observe the breath, which got here with a brand new set of challenges.

To selectively analyze the chemicals or molecules in anyone’s breath, it must be first cooled and condensed right into a liquid. In clinical settings, this cooling step is completed individually from the evaluation. Moistbreath samples are chilled on buckets of ice or bulky refrigerated coolers. Gao’s recent mask, in contrast, is self-cooling. The breath is cooled by a passive cooling system that integrates hydrogel evaporative cooling with radiative cooling to effectively chill the breath on face masks.

“The mask represents a brand new paradigm for respiratory and metabolic disease management and precise medicine because we will easily get breath specimens and analyze the chemical molecules in breath in real time through day by day masks,” says Wenzheng Heng, lead writer of the study and a graduate student at Caltech. “The breath condensate comprises soluble gases in addition to nonvolatile substances in the shape of aerosols or droplets, akin to metabolic substances, inflammatory indicators, and pathogens.”

Once the breath has been converted right into a liquid, a series of capillaries, belonging to a category of devices known as bioinspired microfluidics, immediately transports the liquid to sensors for evaluation. “We learned from plants easy methods to transport the water,” says Gao. “Plants use capillary forces to attract water upward from the bottom.”

The outcomes of the evaluation are then transmitted wirelessly to a private phone, tablet, or computer. “The smart mask could be prepared at a comparatively low price,” says Gao. “It’s designed to cost only about $1 in materials.”

To check the masks, the team performed a set of human studies, primarily focused on patients with asthma or COPD. They specifically monitored the patients’ breath for nitrite, a biomarker for inflammation in each conditions. The outcomes showed that the masks accurately detected the biomarker, indicting inflammation within the patients’ airways.

In one other study, the team demonstrated that the masks accurately detected blood alcohol levels in human subjects, suggesting the masks may very well be used for on-site drinking-and-driving checks or other types of alcohol-consumption monitoring.

Additionally they checked out how the masks could potentially be used to guage blood urea levels within the monitoring and management of kidney disease. As kidney function declines, protein metabolism by-products like urea accumulate within the blood. At the identical time, urea increases in saliva, which breaks down into ammonia gas, and this results in higher ammonium levels within the breath condensate. The brand new study showed that the smart masks could accurately detect these ammonium levels, closely reflecting urea levels within the blood.

“These first studies are a proof of concept,” says Gao. “We would like to expand this technology to include different markers related to varied health conditions. This can be a foundation for making a mask that functions as a flexible general health-monitoring platform.”

As for the comfort of the masks, participants reported favorable experiences, even those with respiratory problems.

“The smart mask platform for EBC harvesting and evaluation represents a significant advance within the potential to observe lung health in real time,” says co-author Harry Rossiter, investigator on the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA and professor of drugs on the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “That idea, that biosensors for a big selection of compounds could also be added in the longer term, highlights the game-changing potential of the smart mask for health monitoring and diagnostics.”

The study titled “A wise mask for exhaled breath condensate harvesting and evaluation” was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, and the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity. Other Caltech authors include graduate students Shukun (Kevin) Yin, Canran Wang, Hong Han, and Jiahong Li, and postdoc Jihong Min, along with Ehsan Shirzaei Sani and Yu Song, former postdocs at Caltech.