Across the globe, infections around the site of surgical incisions are a major cause of illness, long hospital stays, and sometimes death, according to PBS News Hour.
However, one 17-year-old Iowa scientist has made it her mission to come up with a more affordable way to detect the infections earlier, the program reported Thursday.
For a year and a half, Dasia Taylor has reportedly been working on an invention to find infections once a person has been through surgery.
“I came up with color-changing stitches that provide early detection for infections, with the specific focus on surgical site infections in developing countries, because those can be very deadly if they’re found too late,” Taylor said.
“When you have an infection, there’s chemical imbalances going on, and my stitches pick up those chemical imbalances, and then they change color because of what’s going on all, all the science stuff,” she noted.
Taylor reportedly uses sutures dyed with beet juice and said, “Beets are natural indicators. So, a natural indicator is just a baseline term for a substance that changes color when the pH changes.”
Her research may end up saving countless lives, according to Your Morning.
Taylor graduated from high school in June and her journey regarding the sutures began her junior year while taking a chemistry honors class, thanks to a suggestion from her teacher, Carolyn Walling.
“She sat in the front row the very first day. And when I brought up, would anyone like to do a science fair project, she raised her hand immediately, and she stayed after school. And she said, let’s talk about this,” Walling said.
Taylor described her project as a “novel suture additive.” Her next move will be attending college in the fall at the University of Iowa.
She said, “Knowing that I have inspired people all over the world is the real prize to me. That’s the real recognition that, hey, I’m doing good in the world, and this isn’t just for me. This project, this research is quite literally outside of myself.”
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