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By:

Peter Urban,

It may sound far-fetched but electrical engineers at Korea University in Seoul have turned Tootsie Rolls into a modern medical diagnostic tool that someday could be used to monitor

creatinine levels for patients with chronic kidney disease.

​​It turns out the candy, patented by Leo Hirschfeld and first sold in 1896 according to the company, can conduct electricity — and with a little manipulation can be transformed into a

sensor that appears to reliably measure voltage levels in saliva that vary depending on how salty the liquid is.​​ 

In a report appearing in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, researchers Beelee Chua and Donghyun Lee describe how they incorporated the chewy chocolate treat into a disposable sensor that

detects salt and electrolyte levels in saliva. The prototype they designed could detect drops in levels of salts that occur when a woman ovulates and increases in levels of salts that signal

a problem with the kidneys, they found.​​ 

The Korea University researchers acknowledge that additional testing is needed, but they see potential in replacing disposable test strips in some at-home diagnostic kits with a soft candy

electrode that can be licked.​​

“Given the ubiquity of soft candy, the simplicity of the molding process, and the negligible medical waste stream, it is a more appropriate approach to diagnostics design for resource-scarce

clinical settings, such as those in developing countries,” according to the report. “The broader impact of this work will be the paradigm shift of soft candy from food to a new class of

edible, moldable, high-resistivity, and stable electronic materials.”​​

To make the candy sensor, the researchers flattened a Tootsie Roll and created a crosshatch pattern of crevices on the surface to hold saliva. The modified candy was then attached (using two

thin reusable aluminum tubes) to an electric circuit with a voltage detector, explains a news release from the American Chemical Society.

​​This is not the first sweet Chua and Lee have researched to potentially lower the cost and environmental waste of medical devices. In 2019, they turned Haribo gummy bears into a force

transducer to measure signs of child development based on chewing power.​

Peter Urban is a contributing writer and editor who focuses on health news. Urban spent two decades working as a correspondent in Washington, D.C., for daily newspapers in Connecticut,

Massachusetts, Ohio, California and Arkansas, including a stint as Washington bureau chief for the Las Vegas Review Journal. His freelance work has appeared in Scientific American, Bloomberg

Government, and CTNewsJunkie.com.

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