Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) contributes to safe and effective pharmacotherapy in clinical fields. A simple, rapid, low-cost, and minimally-invasive drug measurement method attracts much interest for point-of-care TDM. Tear fluids can be collected minimally-invasively compared to blood sampling and there is a correlation between a drug concentration in tears and that in bloods. Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) with paper-based substrate is useful for point-of-care TDM owing to inexpensiveness and high-sensitivity. Paper is also a safe tear collection tool. Then we are studying on a paper-based SERS of tear specimen for point-of-care TDM. In this paper, to improve sensitivity in measuring drug concentration in tear fluids, we fabricated a SERS substrate by coating gold nano-rods on a paper substrate and evaluated whether the fabricated substrate can enhance Raman scattering. Sodium phenobarbital (PB), an anti-convulsant agent, was used as a target. In experiment, the fabricated substrate indicated the lower detection limit of PB in a solution than a plain paper substrate. This result showed the potential of the paper based SERS substrate to measure drug concentration in tears simply and inexpensively.

Date Published: 10 April 2015
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9332, Optical Diagnostics and Sensing XV: Toward Point-of-Care Diagnostics, 933210 (10 April 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2080619

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9332:
Optical Diagnostics and Sensing XV: Toward Point-of-Care Diagnostics
Gerard L. Coté, Editor(s)