Scientists can now detect antibiotics in your fingerprints – aiding the fight against drug-resistant TB

A fingerprint may soon be all a doctor needs to check whether tuberculosis patients are taking their antibiotics – thanks to a new study led by the University of Surrey.

close up of a fingertip showing the fingerprint

Scientists successfully detected the drugs in finger sweat – and with almost the same accuracy as a blood test.

Up until now, blood tests have been the gold standard for detecting drugs in somebody’s system.

Now we can get results that are almost as accurate through the sweat in somebody’s fingerprint. That means we can monitor treatment for diseases like tuberculosis in a much less invasive way. Professor Melanie Bailey, Theme Leader for Health and Food Technologies, EPSRC Fellow, and Reader in Analytical Science

Curable tuberculosis (TB) is treated with antibiotics. If patients don’t stick to their full course, the treatment might not work, leading to drug-resistant TB instead.

Scientists wanted to know when was best to test, and whether they could tell how much medication the patient had taken.

To do so, they tested ten TB patients at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), in the Netherlands.

It was very simple to collect our samples. We asked patients to wash their hands, put on a nitrile glove to induce sweating, and then press their fingertips onto a paper square.

Finger sweat can be collected without any specialist training. Unlike blood, it isn’t a biohazard, so can be transported and stored much more easily.

We’re looking forward to working with Surrey to detect other TB drugs using this promising technique. Dr Onno Akkerman, Pulmonary physician, University Medical Center Groningen

The samples were shipped to Surrey’s Ion Beam Centre and they were analysed using mass spectrometry – which breaks the sample down to see what it is made of.

Scientists detected antibiotics in finger sweat with 96% accuracy. The metabolite, produced by actually ingesting the drug, showed up with 77% accuracy.