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Routine Community Screening Catches Undiagnosed Asthma

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Friday, September 26, 2025

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Routine screening can help find kids who are suffering from undiagnosed asthma in communities with high levels of the breathing disorder, a new study says.Asthma screening during well-child visits found that more than two-thirds (35%) of children with no previous diagnosis of asthma had at least one risk factor for the disease, researchers will report Monday at an American Academy of Pediatrics’ meeting in Denver.Further, about 24% of kids with risk factors were subsequently diagnosed with asthma, researchers said.Those diagnosed with asthma reported coughing or shortness of breath at night, previous use of an inhaler or difficulty exercising due to breathing problems, researchers said.“Asthma is often diagnosed late or not at all because parents may not think of certain symptoms such as night-time cough or needing to stop activity to catch your breath, as being related to asthma,” researcher Dr. Janine Rethy, division chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Health, a not-for-profit health care provider in the Baltimore-Washington D.C., metropolitan area, said in a news release.For the study, researchers screened 650 children ages 2 and older for asthma during well-child visits performed in a mobile medical clinic between 2021 and 2024. The mobile clinic performed these screens in urban areas with a known high prevalence of asthma.Overall, about 8% of children screened were found to have previously undiagnosed asthma, results showed. Another 18% of the kids had a previous diagnosis of asthma.The children’s home environment likely played a factor in their asthma, researchers found.About 52% of the undiagnosed kids who screened positive for asthma had poor housing conditions — mold, roaches, mice, rats, peeling paint or leaking water.About 38% of kids with a prior diagnosis of asthma also lived in such conditions, results showed.“There are also many environmental triggers in the home that may contribute to these symptoms and which a pediatrician should know about to help understand triggers and incorporate into a treatment plan,” Rethy said.The study shows that more kids with asthma can be helped if doctors and public health experts focus screening efforts on places known to have high rates of asthma, researchers said.“Asthma is highly treatable if diagnosed early and approached with a holistic lens that includes identifying and addressing environmental triggers,” researcher Dr. Karen Ganacias, a MedStar Health pediatrician, said in a news release.“In populations with high asthma prevalence, routine screening for asthma symptoms and modifiable home environmental triggers can be an important first step to improving outcomes and decreasing disparities,” Ganacias added.Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.SOURCE: American Academy of Pediatrics, news release, Sept. 26, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Routine screening can help find kids who are suffering from...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Routine screening can help find kids who are suffering from undiagnosed asthma in communities with high levels of the breathing disorder, a new study says.

Asthma screening during well-child visits found that more than two-thirds (35%) of children with no previous diagnosis of asthma had at least one risk factor for the disease, researchers will report Monday at an American Academy of Pediatrics’ meeting in Denver.

Further, about 24% of kids with risk factors were subsequently diagnosed with asthma, researchers said.

Those diagnosed with asthma reported coughing or shortness of breath at night, previous use of an inhaler or difficulty exercising due to breathing problems, researchers said.

“Asthma is often diagnosed late or not at all because parents may not think of certain symptoms such as night-time cough or needing to stop activity to catch your breath, as being related to asthma,” researcher Dr. Janine Rethy, division chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Health, a not-for-profit health care provider in the Baltimore-Washington D.C., metropolitan area, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers screened 650 children ages 2 and older for asthma during well-child visits performed in a mobile medical clinic between 2021 and 2024. The mobile clinic performed these screens in urban areas with a known high prevalence of asthma.

Overall, about 8% of children screened were found to have previously undiagnosed asthma, results showed. Another 18% of the kids had a previous diagnosis of asthma.

The children’s home environment likely played a factor in their asthma, researchers found.

About 52% of the undiagnosed kids who screened positive for asthma had poor housing conditions — mold, roaches, mice, rats, peeling paint or leaking water.

About 38% of kids with a prior diagnosis of asthma also lived in such conditions, results showed.

“There are also many environmental triggers in the home that may contribute to these symptoms and which a pediatrician should know about to help understand triggers and incorporate into a treatment plan,” Rethy said.

The study shows that more kids with asthma can be helped if doctors and public health experts focus screening efforts on places known to have high rates of asthma, researchers said.

“Asthma is highly treatable if diagnosed early and approached with a holistic lens that includes identifying and addressing environmental triggers,” researcher Dr. Karen Ganacias, a MedStar Health pediatrician, said in a news release.

“In populations with high asthma prevalence, routine screening for asthma symptoms and modifiable home environmental triggers can be an important first step to improving outcomes and decreasing disparities,” Ganacias added.

Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

SOURCE: American Academy of Pediatrics, news release, Sept. 26, 2025

Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Are Your Fruits & Veggies Hiding Pesticides? New Study Says Yes

By I. Edwards HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Sept. 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Eating fruits and vegetables is key to good health, but a new study...

THURSDAY, Sept. 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Eating fruits and vegetables is key to good health, but a new study suggests that choosing produce with higher pesticide residues may boost the amount of these chemicals leaching into the body.Researchers linked the types of produce people eat with levels of pesticides found in their urine. The results show that eating foods on the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) “Dirty Dozen” list such as spinach, strawberries and kale was tied to higher pesticide levels than eating items from the “Clean Fifteen,” which includes pineapples, sweet corn and avocados.“We found consuming different types of fruits and vegetables changes your pesticide levels accordingly, with greater consumption of the higher-residue foods increasing pesticide levels in urine more than consumption of the lower-residue foods,” study author Alexis Temkin, vice president of science at EWG, told CNN.Experts said the findings show a clear connection between what people eat and their exposure to different pesticides.“This tells us that we don’t have to measure each person — when people eat a lot of produce with high residues of pesticides, they’re more likely to have elevated levels in their urine,” Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, told CNN. She was not involved with the study.The 2025 EWG Shopper’s Guide reported that samples of spinach carried more pesticide residue by weight than any other produce tested. In total, researchers found 203 different pesticides across the Dirty Dozen list. The most toxic mixtures were found in green beans, spinach, peppers and leafy greens, researchers said.On the other hand, papaya, onions and watermelon were among the least contaminated fruits, according to the Clean Fifteen list.Health experts stress that fruits and vegetables should still be part of a healthy diet. Further, if purchasing organic isn’t possible, you can reduce pesticide exposure by choosing more foods from the Clean Fifteen and by washing all produce thoroughly, researchers explained.Pesticide exposure has been linked in previous research to birth defects, heart disease and certain cancers. Children and pregnant women are especially vulnerable.SOURCE: CNN, Sept. 24, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Heart Disease Remains Top Killer Worldwide

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Sept. 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Heart disease remains the world’s top killer, causing 1 in every 3...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Sept. 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Heart disease remains the world’s top killer, causing 1 in every 3 deaths around the globe, a new study says.Heart disease, brain bleeds, strokes and high blood pressure were the most common threats to health, researchers found.“This report is a wake-up call: heart disease remains the world’s leading cause of death, and the burden is rising fastest in places least equipped to bear it,” said journal editor Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn."The good news is we know the risks and how to address them,” he added in a news release. "If countries act now with effective health policies and systems, millions of lives can be saved.”For the study, researchers estimated the burden of 375 diseases, including heart disease, on the health of people in 204 countries between 1990 and 2023.Results show that lifestyle-related risk factors account for about 80% of the disability-adjusted life years lost to heart disease, researchers said. Disability-adjusted life years is a measure combining years of life lost to early death with years lived with disability, to create a rounded picture of healthy years of life lost to disease.The top risk factors included high body mass index (an estimate of body fat based on height and weight); high blood sugar levels; smoking; drinking; and poor diet, researchers said. Other top risk factors included environmental exposures like air pollution, lead exposure and higher temperatures, they said.Metabolic problems like excess weight and high blood sugar contributed to 67% of heart-related disability-adjusted life years, the study found. Behaviors such as smoking, drinking and poor diet contributed to 45%, and environmental exposures to 36%.“By targeting the most important and preventable risks, with effective policies and proven, cost-effective treatments, we can work to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases,” said senior researcher Dr. Gregory Roth, director of the Program in Cardiovascular Health Metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.“Each country can find reliable evidence and a kind of policy prescription for better cardiovascular health in our results,” he added in a news release.The study also found that heart disease affected an estimated 240 million people worldwide in 2023; peripheral artery disease, 122 million.Men had higher death rates from heart disease than women in most regions, and risk rose steeply after age 50.The study also showed a 16-fold difference between the countries with the lowest and the highest rates of disability-adjusted life years lost to heart disease.“Our analysis shows wide geographic differences in cardiovascular disease burden that can’t be explained by income level alone,” Roth said. “Given this kind of variation, our findings offer the opportunity to tailor local health policies to target the most relevant risks for specific populations.”SOURCE: American College of Cardiology, news release, Sept. 24, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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The Misplaced Nostalgia for a Pre-Vaccine Past

RFK Jr.’s health policies stem from the idea that the past holds the secret to health and happiness.

The way we respond to the disappointments, dangers, and defects of the present helps determine our political affiliations. If you think the answers lie somewhere in a future condition we’ve yet to achieve, then you may be persuaded by progressive politics; if you think the resources for rescuing society lie somewhere in the past, you may be attracted to conservative politics.This general pattern helps explain the recent alignment of conservative politics and the anti-vaccine movement, despite its long-standing association with crunchy, left-ish causes. Today, the two tendencies have joined in mutual agreement about the wholesomeness of natural health versus modern medicine, indulging in nostalgia for a world before the widespread use of vaccines.The past does contain its share of treasures, and it can be hard to accept that a world so rife with pain and despair is in certain ways the best it has ever been. But the idea that the past held a secret to health and happiness that we’ve lost somehow—especially with respect to infectious disease—is a fantasy with potentially lethal ramifications.[Read: The neo-anti-vaxxers are in power now]Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine-skeptical current secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, originally shared politics with the older anti-vaccine advocates, back-to-the-Earth types who themselves demonstrated a conservative impulse in their search for a primeval Eden. (Plenty of left-leaning people persist in that tradition, though it seems better fit for today’s right, which has a certain appreciation for the pastoral.) A Democrat until 2023, Kennedy entered public life as a champion of environmental protection, battling against corporate interests in court to keep harmful waste out of the air and water. Over time, this overall concern with modern impurity destroying pristine nature evidently extended to other areas of his thinking. As his career progressed, Kennedy adopted several controversial opinions regarding healthy eating, condemning, among other things, meat issued from factory farms, seed oils, and processed food. In a 2024 campaign video from his presidential-primary run, Kennedy promised to “reverse 80 years of farm policy in this country,” harkening to a time before synthetic pesticides and chemical additives to animal feed.If a conservative is, as William F. Buckley Jr. famously wrote, someone who “stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” then Kennedy certainly fits the bill. A proper conservative fights to preserve the status quo. But the most reactionary members of the right won’t settle for protecting the ground their party has already staked out; their project is to return to the status quo ante, the way things were in the (sometimes distant) past. The slogan “Make America Great Again” manages to disparage the present while promising a return to an era in which Christianity was nationally dominant, manufacturing jobs were the bedrock of the economy, and the country was ever expanding. Kennedy’s positions on processed food and pharmaceuticals fit perfectly into that picture.“Today’s children have to get between 69 and 92 vaccines in order to be fully compliant, between maternity and 18 years,” Kennedy said during a recent Senate hearing about Trump’s 2026 health-care agenda, by way of comparison with children of the past, who were required to receive fewer vaccines (if any at all). Likewise, Kennedy has rejected the introduction of fluoride into drinking water, a practice initiated in the mid-1940s to help prevent tooth decay, as well as the pasteurization of milk, which began in the late 19th century. “When I was a kid” in the ’50s and ’60s, Kennedy said earlier this year, “we were the healthiest, most robust people in the world. And today we’re the sickest.”[Read: How RFK Jr. could eliminate vaccines without banning them]This is in some respects true, but in other ways dangerously wrong. Kennedy is quick to point out the relative rarity of chronic conditions such as childhood diabetes and autoimmune disorders in the past. But he is apparently hesitant to acknowledge that mid-century America came with its own share of serious health problems, including a high rate of cigarette smoking and horrifying infant mortality rates compared with the present. When Kennedy was young, vaccine-preventable childhood illnesses such as measles routinely killed hundreds annually. So far this year, only three people in the United States have died of measles—largely the result of an outbreak of the disease caused in part by declining vaccination rates. And if modern innovations in food and medicine have come with their share of hazards, it would be wrong to conclude that their predecessors were superior. Raw milk allegedly caused the hospitalization of a toddler and the miscarriage of an unborn child as recently as this summer. At the center of the “Make America Healthy Again” crusade is a high degree of trust in the wisdom of nature. But the contemporary appeal of unadulterated nature springs from human successes in controlling the elements; it’s hard to romanticize a relatively recent vaccine-free past while considering photographs of children’s bodies ravaged by smallpox, a disease that persisted well into the 20th century. Likewise, long before COVID-19, America experienced cholera and flu pandemics with hundreds of thousands of associated deaths, as well as lesser outbreaks of illnesses such as diphtheria, polio, and pertussis, all three of which were notorious child-killers. Today, the rarity of those conditions has fostered a false sense of security, and a naive assessment of the natural world. Relinquishing the successes of general vaccine coverage, however, is guaranteed to belie the idea that untainted nature contains all the keys to health and wellness. Our historical moment has enough strife without revisiting past battles fought and won.*Illustration sources: The New York Historical / Getty; GHI / Universal History Archive / Getty; Bettmann / Getty.

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Green Tea Shows Promise in Fighting Obesity and Diabetes

A plant extract altered muscle metabolism in guinea pigs, improving glucose-related processes. Green tea has long been valued for its medicinal and antioxidant qualities. It has been extensively investigated for its role in metabolic health, particularly in conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Recent research supported by FAPESP (19/10616-5, 21/08498-4 and 23/11295-3) has [...]

Studies in obese mice suggest green tea extract can reduce weight gain, improve glucose regulation, and protect muscle health. Credit: ShutterstockA plant extract altered muscle metabolism in guinea pigs, improving glucose-related processes. Green tea has long been valued for its medicinal and antioxidant qualities. It has been extensively investigated for its role in metabolic health, particularly in conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Recent research supported by FAPESP (19/10616-5, 21/08498-4 and 23/11295-3) has provided new insights into how green tea works and showed that treatment with the beverage lowered body weight and markedly improved glucose sensitivity and insulin resistance in obese mice. These findings highlight its potential use as a supportive strategy in managing obesity in humans. The studies were led by Rosemari Otton from the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Health Sciences at Cruzeiro do Sul University in São Paulo, Brazil. Otton, who has spent more than 15 years researching green tea, explained that her initial interest arose from questioning whether the common belief in its weight-loss benefits was scientifically valid. Her recent findings were published in the journal Cell Biochemistry & Function. Dietary experiments with a Western-style diet To investigate the effects of green tea on obesity, the research team placed mice on a high-calorie diet for four weeks. This diet included both excess fat and what they described as a “cafeteria diet,” designed to replicate typical Western eating habits. “We give them chocolate, filled cookies, dulce de leche, condensed milk… In other words, the same type of food that many people consume on a daily basis,” said Otton. Following this phase, the animals entered a 12-week treatment period. They remained on the high-calorie diet, but some were also given a standardized green tea extract at a dose of 500 mg per kilogram of body weight. The extract was delivered intragastrically (via gavage) to ensure precise dosing. Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biology of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Health Sciences at Cruzeiro do Sul University. Credit: Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biology of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Health Sciences at Cruzeiro do Sul University“It’s a method that ensures they all receive the exact dose we want to study. If we put it in water, for example, we’d have no way of knowing how much the animal actually ingested,” says the researcher. For humans, this amount would be equivalent to consuming about 3 grams of green tea per day, or three cups. Importance of standardized extracts However, according to the researcher, not all commercial green tea meets the necessary quality standards. “Ready-made tea bags do not always guarantee the quantity or quality of the compounds. The ideal for consumption would be to use standardized green tea extract, like those found in compounding pharmacies. This is a concentrated way of using the plant, with a guarantee of the presence of flavonoids, which are the health-beneficial compounds present in the green tea plant,” Otton points out. A notable feature of the study was its strict control of room temperature. Throughout the experiment, the animals were housed in a thermoneutral setting (28 °C). By contrast, standard animal facilities typically maintain a temperature of about 22 °C, which for mice constitutes a state of chronic cold. “Excessive cold activates compensatory regulatory mechanisms in the animals’ bodies, causing them to expend more energy to stay warm. This can mask the real effects of any substance,” explains the researcher. “If the animals are in a colder environment, the effect of the tea is enhanced by the activation of energy expenditure due to the cold. But by maintaining thermoneutrality, we were able to see the effects of green tea in a ‘clean’ way, without environmental interference,” she explains. A previous study published in August 2022 in the European Journal of Nutrition found that obese mice treated with green tea experienced a reduction of up to 30% in body weight. “If a person loses 5% to 10% of their body weight, that’s already a lot. So this result in animals is very significant,” says the professor. Gene expression and metabolic improvements Another highlight of the most recent study was the preservation of muscle morphology. Obesity typically causes a reduction in muscle fiber diameter, but green tea prevented this muscle atrophy. “One way to assess muscle function is to look at fiber diameter. If it increases, we have more active muscle components. Green tea managed to maintain this diameter, showing that it protects muscle against the harmful effects of obesity,” Otton explains. In addition to morphological data, the researchers evaluated the expression of genes related to glucose metabolism. Treatment with green tea increased the expression of Insr, Irs1, Glut4, Hk1, and Pi3k – genes that are important for glucose uptake and use in muscles. The activity of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), an enzyme that is essential for glucose metabolism, was also restored. According to Otton, there is evidence indicating that green tea does not affect the weight of lean animals, suggesting that it acts selectively against excess body fat. “It makes obese animals lose weight but keeps lean animals at a balanced weight. This shows that the tea seems to need an environment with excess nutrients to act, which supports the hypothesis that it acts directly on fat cells.” Another aspect investigated by the team was the action of the compounds in isolation. “Green tea is a complex matrix with dozens of bioactive compounds. We’ve tried to separate these compounds and study their effects individually, but the whole extract is always more effective. There’s a synergy between the compounds that we can’t reproduce when they’re isolated,” she says. According to the scientist, one hypothesis explaining the mechanism by which green tea affects obesity involves adiponectin, a protein produced by adipocytes that has anti-inflammatory and metabolic regulation functions. “We conducted a study with adiponectin-knockout mice, meaning they don’t produce it. And in these animals, green tea had no effect. This suggests that adiponectin is a key player in the mechanism of action of the tea,” she comments. Looking toward human applications Despite the encouraging results of the mouse study, Otton points out that it is not yet possible to determine a safe and effective dose of green tea for humans. This is mainly due to the variability of the extracts and the fact that each person behaves differently. “The ideal is chronic consumption, as we see in Asian countries. In Japan, for example, people consume green tea every day, throughout their lives, and obesity rates are low. But this is different from drinking tea for five months and expecting a miraculous weight loss effect,” she ponders. The researcher argues that natural and accessible treatments should gain ground in the fight against obesity, especially as alternatives to expensive medications that often have side effects. “The idea is to have safe, natural, effective, and high-quality compounds. The Camellia sinensis plant offers this. We’re still studying all the compounds involved, but there’s no doubt that green tea, as a plant matrix rich in flavonoids, has important therapeutic potential.” The researcher emphasizes that science always seeks to develop practical solutions. “What we see in animals doesn’t always reproduce in humans. But if we want to make this translation to real life, we need to think about all the details, such as ambient temperature. It’s these precautions that increase the validity of our data. We’re far from having all the answers, but we’re getting closer and closer.” Reference: “Does Green Tea Ameliorate Obesity in Mice Kept at Thermoneutrality by Modulating Skeletal Muscle Metabolism?” by Celso Pereira Batista Sousa-Filho, Marcus Vinicius Aquino Silva, Victória Silva, Kauan Lima, Allanis Valon, Isabela Fiorentino Souza Nascimento, Maria Angélica Spadella and Rosemari Otton, 16 June 2025, Cell Biochemistry and Function.DOI: 10.1002/cbf.70094 Funding: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.

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A Simple Test Strip That Reveals the Invisible Nanoplastic Threat

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have created an “optical sieve” capable of detecting minute nanoplastic particles. Functioning much like a test strip, this innovation is designed to provide a new analytical tool for environmental and health research. Researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and the University of Melbourne in Australia have introduced [...]

Nanoplastic particles made visible: the newly developed test strip from the University of Stuttgart allows dangerous nanoplastic particles to be detected under a light microscope. Credit: University of Stuttgart / 4th Physics InstituteResearchers at the University of Stuttgart have created an “optical sieve” capable of detecting minute nanoplastic particles. Functioning much like a test strip, this innovation is designed to provide a new analytical tool for environmental and health research. Researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and the University of Melbourne in Australia have introduced a simple way to analyze very small nanoplastic particles in environmental samples. The approach relies on a standard optical microscope and a newly designed test strip called the optical sieve. The findings are reported in Nature Photonics. “The test strip can serve as a simple analysis tool in environmental and health research,” explains Prof. Harald Giessen, Head of the 4th Physics Institute of the University of Stuttgart. “In the near future, we will be working toward analyzing nanoplastic concentrations directly on site. But our new method could also be used to test blood or tissue for nanoplastic particles.” Nanoplastics as a danger to humans and the environment Plastic waste ranks among the most urgent global challenges of the 21st century. It contaminates oceans, rivers, and beaches, and microplastics have been found in living organisms. Until recently, researchers have mainly examined larger fragments of plastic. Evidence now points to an even more concerning threat: nanoplastic particles. These particles are far smaller than the width of a human hair, form as bigger pieces of plastic break down, and cannot be seen with the naked eye. At sub-micrometer sizes, they can also pass through biological barriers, including the skin and the blood-brain barrier. Color changes make tiny particles visible Because of the small particle size, their detection poses a particular challenge. As a result, there are not only gaps in our understanding of how particles affect organisms but also a lack of rapid and reliable detection methods. In collaboration with a research group from Melbourne in Australia, researchers at the University of Stuttgart have now developed a novel method that can quickly and affordably detect such small particles. Color changes on a special test strip make nanoplastics visible in an optical microscope and allow researchers to count the number of particles and determine their size. The optical sieve nanoplastic particles fall into holes of the appropriate size in the test strip. The color of the holes changes. The new color provides information about the size and number of particles. Credit: University of Stuttgart / 4th Physics Institute“Compared with conventional and widely used methods such as scanning electron microscopy, the new method is considerably less expensive, does not require trained personnel to operate, and reduces the time required for detailed analysis,” explains Dr. Mario Hentschel, Head of the Microstructure Laboratory at the 4th Physics Institute. Optical sieve instead of expensive electron microscope The “optical sieve” uses resonance effects in small holes to make the nanoplastic particles visible. A study on optical effects in such holes was first published by the research group at the University of Stuttgart in 2023. The process is based on tiny depressions, known as Mie voids, which are etched into a semiconductor substrate. Depending on their diameter and depth, the holes interact characteristically with the incident light. This results in a bright color reflection that can be seen in an optical microscope. If a particle falls into one of the indentations, its color changes noticeably. One can therefore infer from the changing color whether a particle is present in the void. “The test strip works like a classic sieve,” explains Dominik Ludescher, PhD student and first author of the publication in “Nature Photonics”. Particles ranging from 0.2 to 1 µm can thus be examined without difficulty. “The particles are filtered out of the liquid using the sieve in which the size and depth of the holes can be adapted to the nanoplastic particles, and subsequently, the resulting color change can be detected. This allows us to determine whether the voids are filled or empty.” Number, size, and size distribution of particles can be determined The novel detection method used can do even more. If the sieve is provided with voids of different sizes, only one particle of a suitable size will collect in each hole. “If a particle is too large, it won’t fit into the void and will be simply flushed away during the cleaning process,” says Ludescher. “If a particle is too small, it will adhere poorly to the well and will be washed away during cleaning.” In this way, the test strips can be adapted so that the size and number of particles in each individual hole can be determined from the reflected color. Synthesized environmental samples examined For their measurements, the researchers used spherical particles of various diameters. These are available in aqueous solutions with specific nanoparticles. Because real samples from bodies of water with known nanoparticle concentrations are not yet available, the team produced a suitable sample themselves. The researchers used a water sample from a lake that contained a mixture of sand and other organic components and added spherical particles in known quantities. The concentration of plastic particles was 150 µg/ml. The number and size distribution of the nanoplastic particles were also determined for this sample using the “optical sieve.” Can be used like a test strip “In the long term, the optical sieve will be used as a simple analysis tool in environmental and health research. The technology could serve as a mobile test strip that would provide information on the content of nanoplastics in water or soil directly on site,” explains Hentschel. The team is now planning experiments with nanoplastic particles that are not spherical. The researchers also plan to investigate whether the process can be used to distinguish between particles of different plastics. They are also particularly interested in collaborating with research groups that have specific expertise in processing real samples from bodies of water. Reference: “Optical sieve for nanoplastic detection, sizing and counting” by D. Ludescher, L. Wesemann, J. Schwab, J. Karst, S. B. Sulejman, M. Ubl, B. O. Clarke, A. Roberts, H. Giessen and M. Hentschel, 8 September 2025, Nature Photonics.DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01733-x Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.

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