One Centimetre is enough

25.06.2008
http://www.innovations-report.com/ht...rt-113050.html

Did you eat fish last year that contained high mercury levels? A researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has developed an innovative test that uses hair to provide the answer

Blond or dark, long or short, curly or straight: Hair is far more than just an ornament atop your head. In fact, a single strand of hair amounts to an entire biological information bank. And the longer the hair, the more information it contains.

Like a multiple - year blood test

Trace metals such as iron, zinc, copper, nickel, mercury, manganese or molybdenum are found in the body in extremely small amounts. They serve a variety of functions, and are consumed through food and drink. The body doesn’t produce these substances on its own. Currently, if for some reason you want to check the trace metal levels in your body, you have to go to the doctor, who will take the centilitres of blood needed for a test, and send them off to be analysed.

But now Kristin Gellein, a PhD student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), has developed a new and better analytical method to measure trace metals and other elements in the body. And all she needs is a tiny little strand of hair. Just one centimetre is enough – from that Gellein can sift out and quantify up to 30 different trace metals.

The significance of Gellein’s test is this: the substances found in hair mirror the substances found in the blood. And because hair grows at a rate of about one centimetre per month, Gellein can conduct a retrospective blood analysis by testing hair centimetre by centimetre. A single strand of hair thus becomes a kind of time machine, allowing Gellein to track a person’s trace metal exposure back in time.

A regular blood test just provides information on a person’s blood levels at the time that the blood test is taken. But an analysis of hair is more like a continuous blood test – and if the strand is long enough, the information it stores can span years.

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