High schooler invented color-changing sutures to detect infection | Hacker News Reader

High schooler invented color-changing sutures to detect infection

smithsonianmag.com

220 pointswebmaven39 comments

At first I was kind of skeptical because detecting pH has been done for decades (and quite easily) - but her methodology for keeping the dye on the suture was really smart just in general. One thing that would make this really viable is if she could make the color change a bit more extreme. Personally red and dark purple are really hard to tell apart for some people, especially for detecting something as a surgical infectionl.

I agree. Very cool. Having a more dramatic color change would be a must to take it to market and reduce/eliminate false positives. I bet there are specialized chemists that they could work with on a second iteration.

Especially with blood around in case the suture leaks or there is a bubble of blood...

Cotton is not a great suture material: low tensile strength when wet and it’ll absorb/wick bodily fluids, which sets the scene for an infection.

Catgut and silk were traditionally used, but there are tons of synthetic ones too.

Similar ideas are already patented [1]. I appreciate the simplicity of her approach, but I'm not sure if she would be able to create a business. I hope her the best.

[1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090142275A1/en?q=Infec...

Wow I was skeptical before I clicked the link but that's not even similar. That's the exact same thing.

The general idea is obvious: a (literal) litmus test.

The details are what make it work, including availability of cheap test materials.

> Although the above-referenced indicators are clas sified as solvatochromic, it should be understood that the present invention is not necessarily limited to any particular mechanism for the color change of the indicator. Even when a solvatochromic indicator is employed, other mechanisms may actually be wholly or partially responsible for the color change of the indicator. For example, acid-base or proton donation reactions between the indicator and microbe may result in the color change. As an example, highly organized acid moieties on bacteria cell walls may protonate certain indicators, resulting in a loss of color.

Patents are difficult to defend in that it has to specifically mention the new idea that you are trying to patent and not just refer to the general idea. However the statement above might be sufficiently close?

On the other hand, I just noticed its status as "Abandoned."

Courts are very reticent to overturn a patent even if it is completely bogus. There are many of these bogus patents, the worst has to be a guy who patented "driving LEDs via their I2C interface" which is on par with patenting driving a car.

I love this story, especially her attitude about wanting to find out for herself and not take anyone else's word.

That curiosity and questioning what others have overlooked goes a long way towards discovery.

This is super cool but my first thought was that human skin already changes color to detect infection. Or gets swollen, or leaks pus, etc.

Yes but ideally this will catch it before the infection advances to that level.

Light colored human skin changes color a lot. As a dark skinned person, almost none of the skin color indications work for me.

Well, that's a interesting coincidence. The prizewinner in the OP also has a skin color that can't show infection by color.

I wonder how many other medical techniques are predicated on assumptions like the color of skin that don't work for everyone, and conversely how many medical challenges are literally invisible to most doctors.

Pulse oximeters have been a notable instance just this year:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/16/9472260...

The problem has been known for some time, but has only been front page news recently. I don't know of any technological improvements to come of this yet, but I hope people are working on it. It might be exactly the kind of thing a bright high schooler could figure out.

Neat in theory but what do you do about dried secretions like blood that color or conceal the suture? Or when the suture is covered by some antibiotic or barrier cream?

Indeed, not every solution works in every possible case. Fortunately the person in the OP and many others still have time to perform research on these problems.

Found out about this on NPR. I wish her more success.

What do her parents do?

I know you're asking this to try to downplay her remarkable achievements. But her parent is a single mother [1] who's an insurance agent [2].

[1] https://wsspaper.com/65234/news/qa-with-science-talent-searc...

[2] https://dailyiowan.com/2020/11/18/iowa-city-west-senior-dasi...

Really the question is how did she do that? If she had parents in the field (probably a common scenario), we don't need to know much more. If it's something else, then we can ask if those conditions can be generalized.

Her parent is a single mother, insurance agent.

How do you know the question is intended to downplay her remarkable achievements? I first interpreted the question along the lines of Mozart or Tiger Woods and didn't think about it uncharitably until you brought it up.

The whole affair seems to be politicized too much to not question the truthfulness of the claims presented as facts.

Also, pH-sensitive dyed wound dressings have been in development for at least a decade by now, at the Fraunhofer institute[1] in Germany.

[1]https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/11/dre...

> The whole affair seems to be politicized too much to not question the truthfulness of the claims presented as facts.

Do you realise your comment sounds a lot like, 'she only got this far because she's a young black woman'?

can you explain to me what it means to be politicized, and which claims you find questionable?

I took the question as "thats impressive for someone this young, are her parents in related fields so shes been exposed to this stuff or is it all self guided?"