A new 3D, microfluidic-oriented, multi-functional, and highly stretchable soft wearable sensor.

Increasing demand for wearable devices has resulted in the development of soft sensors; however, an excellent soft sensor for measuring stretch, twist, and pressure simultaneously has not been proposed yet. This paper presents a novel, fully 3D, microfluidic-oriented, gel-based, and highly stretchable resistive soft sensor. The proposed sensor is multi-functional and could be used to measure stretch, twist, and pressure, which is the potential of using a fully 3D structure in the sensor. Unlike previous methods, in which almost all of them used EGaIn as the conductive material, in this case, we used a low-cost, safe (biocompatible), and ubiquitous conductive gel instead. To show the functionality of the proposed sensor, FEM simulations and a set of designed experiments were done, which show linear (99%), accurate (> 94.9%), and durable (tested for a whole of four hours) response of the proposed sensor. Then, the sensor was put through its paces on a female test subject's knee, elbow, and wrist to show the potential application of the sensor as a body motion sensor. Also, a fully 3D active foot insole was developed, fabricated, and evaluated to evaluate the pressure functionality of the sensor. The result shows good discrimination and pressure measurement for different foot sole areas. The proposed sensor has the potential to be used in real-world applications like rehabilitation, wearable devices, soft robotics, smart clothing, gait analysis, AR/VR, etc.

Host genetic factors and clinical parameters influencing the occult hepatitis C virus infection in patients on chronic hemodialysis: Is it still a controversial infection?

AIM: The presence of occult hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection (OCI) is still controversial, however, this infection cannot be ignored. Therefore, the current study aimed at assessing the OCI frequency in patients on chronic hemodialysis (CHD) and also evaluating the association between OCI incidence with clinical parameters and interferon lambda 3/4 (IFNL3/4) gene polymorphisms. METHODS: A total of 515 patients on CHD and HCV negative markers were selected. Plus- and minus-stranded HCV-RNA was tested in peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and then genotyped using the restriction fragment length polymorphism method. RESULTS: The frequency of OCI was 11.3% in patients on CHD. Among 58 patients with OCI, 25.8%, 62.1%, and 12.1% were infected with HCV-1a, HCV-1b, and HCV-3a, respectively. The mean alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, and alkaline phosphatase levels were 31.9 ± 24.8, 32.3 ± 19.1, and 171.6 ± 88.9, respectively. None of the patients with OCI had a history of liver disease. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, platelets, duration of hemodialysis, HCV subtypes, IFNL3 rs12979860 TT, IFNL3 rs8099917 GG, IFNL3 rs12980275 GG, and IFNL4 ss469415590 ΔG/ΔG genotypes were associated with OCI. CONCLUSION: There was a moderate prevalence of OCI in Iranian patients on CHD. The current study findings indicated that this infection was associated with clinical parameters and unfavorable genotypes of IFNL3 single nucleotide polymorphisms and IFNL4 ss469415590. Further studies are required to determine the correlation between OCI incidence with clinical parameters and host genetic factors.