Disease Tooth Sensor Shares Your Health Data With Your Doctor

Scientists Are Developing A Tooth Sensor That Can Detect Disease Before Your Doctor

By Alena Hall ‧ Updated 08/08/2018 ‧ Live /

Unsplash/Kyle Loftus

Calling all hypochondriacs who spend their days scouring WebMD in search of the latest disease they’ve contracted: This new innovation in health care could allow your teeth to tell you what you really need to know about your health.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine and School of Engineering & Applied Science in St. Louis, Missouri is developing a “smart tooth” technology that it hopes will be used in early disease detection in the future.

Unlike other new, health-related oral devices, this minimally invasive innovation aims to place a tiny-teeny microsensor on the inside of your gum line rather than bonding it to a tooth’s surface. From here, it analyzes your saliva to gather specific health data points and then electronically passes them along to a registered phone or computer. That could mean your personal cell phone, but it could also mean your physician’s internal information network.

Unsplash/Jelleke Vanooteghem

The “electronic tooth” will first be used to monitor peptides (groups of amino acids) that are related to the bone breakdown that occurs during periodontitis, a serious dental disease that can lead to the loosening and even the loss of teeth. In the future, the scientists hope to program the device to be able to analyze stress levels, keep an eye on inflammation and even monitor diabetes for folks dealing with the disease.

While this device will not replace your regular dentist appointments (or annual doctor office visits), it could forge an entirely new path in the world of preventative medicine, supplying physicians and patients alike with important health data before conditions manifest into something truly severe. Talk about the power of science!

[h/t Mashable]

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