A low-cost and portable biosensor array for the simultaneous multi-analyte monitoring employed in health and athletic performance exploiting a multi-channel surface plasmon resonance platform based on plastic optical fibers

Hormones are crucial in regulating physical and mental health and athletic sports performance. In particular, cortisol, estradiol, and testosterone monitoring can provide insights into their effects on mood, stress responses, and athletic performance.
Increasing levels of these hormones are linked to increased anxiety and depression, and measurements of their fluctuations can provide predictions of sports performance. Both sex hormones and cortisol significantly modulate stress responses, with distinct effects observed in men and women and in individuals undergoing hormone treatments. These insights underscore the importance of hormone monitoring for optimising mental health and athletic outcomes.
This work proposes a compact and low-cost multi-channel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) platform based on plastic optical fibers (POFs) combined with several specific bio-receptor layers as a point-of-care measurement tool. This multi-channel SPR-based tool is based on optical fiber components for precise, label-free, and high-throughput detection without complex and expensive instrumentation. The multi-channel SPR-POF tool is applied to simultaneous multi-analyte detection of cortisol, estradiol, and testosterone in saliva. The plasmonic POFs’ sensitive surfaces are functionalised with different bio-receptors, such as the Glucocorticoid Receptor (GR) and the Estrogen Receptor (ER). This compact and cost-effective multi-channel SPR-based point-of-care tool could be of interest for the simultaneous detection of several biomarkers in saliva for health and sports purposes.