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Life

24th Jun 2015

Teens Invent Condom That Changes Colour When it Detects an STI

The savvy youngsters presented their work at the TeenTech Awards

Rebecca McKnight

To be fair, it’s probably never good news if a body part glows in the dark… unless you’re some form of Marvel superhero. 

A very smart and sexual health-aware group of teenagers have invented a condom that “glows” when it detects an STI.

The condom, which the team from Isaac Newton Academy in Ilford, Essex have named S.T.EYE, was one of the designs presented at the TeenTech Awards, a competition for 11 to 16-year-old kids tasked with using technology “to make life better, simpler or easier.”

The teens’ creation works by using a small layer of chemicals on the surface of the rubber. These chemicals then attach to bacteria and virus commonly found in STIs, with the reaction causing molecules on the condom to emit a low fluorescent light – the colour of which is dependent on the STI detected.

Condoms made with native latex are ready to be packed at the Natex factory that produces around 100 million condoms per year for the Brazilian Health Ministry in Xapuri, Acre State on October 7, 2014. Current production equates to a fifth of the 500 millions condoms -- known as "camisinhas de Venus" or little Venus shirts in Portuguese -- which the government hands out annually free of charge in a country where according to the UNAIDS non-government organization 730,000 people are HIV-positive.   AFP PHOTO / YASUYOSHI CHIBA         (Photo credit should read YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

In case you were wondering about the range, it’s: yellow for herpes, green for chlamydia, blue for syphilis and purple for the human papillomavirus.

Daanyaal Ali, 14, is one of the creators. She said: “We wanted to create something that makes detecting harmful STIs safer than ever before, so that people can take immediate action in the privacy of their own homes without the invasive procedures at the doctors.

“We’ve made sure we’re able to give peace of mind to users and make sure people can be even more responsible than ever before.”