A fingertip patch that continuously tracks Parkinson's disease medication levels through chemicals in sweat has the potential to greatly improve patients’ quality of life, new data suggest.
Prescribing the right dose of levodopa – the gold-standard drug for managing the loss of motor control caused by Parkinson’s disease — is very challenging. Too little leaves patients unable to move, while too much triggers severe, uncontrollable jerking movements.
Doctors currently rely on patients’ diaries to adjust their doses, but the approach is imprecise.
As reported by the research team in PNAS, the fingertip has a high density of sweat glands, and the patch contains an absorbent gel that acts like a sweat sponge to draw sweat out of the pores.
When levodopa in the patient’s sweat comes into contact with enzymes embedded in the patch, it triggers a chemical reaction, which in turn generates a small, measurable voltage. The voltage serves as an indicator of the patient’s levodopa level: lower voltage signals low levels, while higher voltage signals high levels.
In clinical tests involving both healthy volunteers and patients with Parkinson's, the patch tracked levodopa levels as accurately as standard laboratory blood tests, which take days to return results.
This technology lays the groundwork for a closed-loop system, where a levodopa monitoring patch could communicate with a pump to automatically deliver the precise doses of the drug right when the body needs it, the researchers said.
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