Spicy Recipe for At-Home Diagnostics: Smart Salivary Sensors for Point-of-Care Diagnosis of Jaundice.

Even though significant advances have been made, there is still a lack of reliable sensors capable of noninvasively monitoring bilirubin and diagnosing jaundice as the most common neonatal disease, particularly at the point-of-care (POC) where blood sampling from infants is accompanied by serious challenges and concerns. Herein, for the first time, using an easy-to-fabricate/use assay, we demonstrate the capability of curcumin embedded within paper for noninvasive optical monitoring of bilirubin in saliva. The highly selective sensing of the developed sensor toward bilirubin is attributed to bilirubin photoisomerization under blue light exposure, which can selectively restore the bilirubin-induced quenched fluorescence of curcumin.