No wires, no hassle, detecting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease

Get ready for this journey, seekers of knowledge! Visualize a future where your smartphone is able to identify brain diseases, as if it were a true wizard of knowledge. Well, a team of brilliant brains from around the world has created a portable device that is basically like the James Bond of medicine. The mission? Catching Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s biomarkers without invading anything! How do they do it? Well, this ingenious device uses a kind of electrical magic instead of complicated chemical tricks, just imagine it’s like a technological magic wand that can analyze saliva and urine samples without disturbing anyone. No needles, no complications!

Scientists have already tested this device on in vitro samples from patients and it turns out that it is as accurate as those detective TV shows, but here comes the best part: they plan to modify it to detect other diseases as well! It is as if we are taking our first steps into a world where diseases cannot hide. But what makes this device so special? Instead of relying on chemicals, it is based on electrical detection. This, according to scientists, is easier to implement and more accurate – think of it as playing detective with electricity instead of complicated chemicals.

And now, the exciting twist. This device could make testing for brain diseases as easy as testing at home! Yes, at home, as if you were making brownies, but with biomarkers. Ratnesh Lal, one of the science masters behind it, says it could help us detect neurodegenerative diseases in any corner of the globe. Let’s talk about bringing science home! By the year 2060, an estimated 14 million Americans will be affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and other brain diseases such as Parkinson’s are also on the rise. But here is our scientist, Ratnesh Lal, trying to save the day, he wants to do tests without needles, without complicated MRI images, but with his cool invention!

The idea is that this device can detect some key biomarkers for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s from saliva and urine. Not only that, but it can transmit the results wirelessly! Imagine getting an alert on your smartphone saying, “Hey, everything’s okay here!” or “Alert, there’s something you need to check!” To realize this vision, this group of scientists took a device they invented during the COVID pandemic and tweaked it for this new purpose. Yes, we’re talking about doing science by recycling, like true ecologists!

How does this magic gadget work? It has a chip with a special transistor and an ultra-thin graphene layer and no, don’t worry, you don’t need to become a scientist to understand it. Let’s say this chip has a kind of DNA that connects to the proteins responsible for brain diseases, when they connect, the device detects it like a real scientific detective! They have tested this device with proteins from deceased Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, and it has done as well as the most advanced methods available. It can even work with extremely low concentrations, as if it had detection superpowers! Now, the exciting part: this device is getting ready to go into action in the real world, they have licensed the technology to a company called Ampera Life, and they are about to bring it to market! If tests in hospital and nursing home environments go well, we could see this device in our hands within a year. The future of medicine is here, and it’s more exciting than a science fiction movie!