Enhanced Extraction of Dermal Interstitial Fluid Using Microneedles by Increasing Skin Water Content
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Author(s)
Mena Lapaix, Juan Luis Luis
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Abstract
Interstitial fluid (ISF) in the skin contains biomarkers with potential use in medical diagnostics, and microneedles (MNs) provide promising low-cost and simple strategies to extract ISF. However, current MN-based systems usually extract <10 µl of ISF, which is insufficient for many applications. Here, we show that increasing pressure and water content, and degrading dermal fibers, increased ISF collected from porcine skin ex vivo. Experimental findings, supported by a fiber-matrix model of skin, demonstrated that increasing dermal water content increased pore size >5-fold, and mobile water ~2-fold. We leveraged these findings to develop an ISF collection method involving laser pre-treatment of skin to increase skin water content, MN puncture of skin to provide pathways for ISF flow, and suction used to convectively drive ISF flow. Using this method, we extracted tens of microliters of ISF from the skin of human subjects, which represents an order-of-magnitude increase compared to previous results. Overall, the laser-MN-suction system provides a simple method to sample tens of microliters of ISF from skin, which could enable study of ISF biomarkers to advance knowledge of physiology and develop ISF-based diagnostics for clinical medicine.
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2023-09-05
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Dissertation