Monitoring of minerals level in dialysate during hemodialysis treatment of kidney patients using LIBS technique.

Chronic kidney patients may have difficulties in blood filtration to eliminate the waste from the blood and to maintain the level of the minerals in the blood. Hemodialysis (HD) is an artificial way to remove the waste from the blood of a kidney patient and to maintain the proper mineral level in the blood. Reverse osmosis (RO) water having less total dissolved solids (TDS) < 50 ppm is used to prepare dialysis fluid/dialysate in dialysis with two chemicals (electrolytes and salts such as sodium bicarbonate). To check the purity of RO water from various RO machines used to prepare dialysate, which is vital for the safety of the patient, the laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technique has been used. Also, the amount of replacement of electrolytes/minerals between the blood of the patient and dialysate after dialysis has been checked/determined for two different machines: hemodialysis machine (HDM) and on-line hemo-dia filtration machine (on-line HDF machine). It is observed that the proper amount of electrolytes (Na, Ca, and Mg) are maintained/normalized (depending upon patient's need), excess K is removed, and excess urea and creatinine is removed continuously from the blood of a patient during dialysis treatment which is essential for the better health of a kidney patient. Our results show that the RO water used in on-line HDF machine is purer (i.e., ultrapure); therefore, the quality of life of a kidney patient may be better if dialysis is performed with the on-line HDF machine. The experimental results also show that the filtration capacity of the dialyzer decreases after reusing it many times for dialysis treatment.

Quantitative analysis of human hairs and nails.

Hair and nails are human biomarkers capable of providing a continuous assessment of the concentrations of elements inside the human body to indicate the nutritional status, metabolic changes, and the pathogenesis of various human diseases. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry are robust and multi-element analytical techniques able to analyze biological samples of various kinds for disease diagnosis. The primary objective of this review article is to focus on the major developments and advances in LIBS and XRF for the elemental analysis of hair and nails over the last 10-year period. The developments in the qualitative and quantitative analyses of human hair and nail samples are discussed in detail, with special emphasis on the key aspects of elemental imaging and distribution of essential and non-essential elements within the hair and nail tissue samples. Microchemical imaging applications by LIBS and XRF (including micro-XRF and scanning electron microscopy, SEM) are also presented for healthy as well as diseased tissue hair and nail samples in the context of disease diagnosis. In addition, main challenges, prospects, and complementarities of LIBS and XRF toward analyzing human hair and nails for disease diagnosis are also thoroughly discussed here.