An Intelligent Hydrogel Sensor Patch for Sustained Drug Delivery and Joint Angle Monitoring

Gouty arthritis severely compromises patients’ quality of life, presenting a major global health challenge. Currently, applying transdermal plasters to deliver xanthine oxidase (XOD) inhibitors is the conventional treatment. However, this strategy is severely limited by erratic drug release profiles, poor breathability, and the inability to monitor joint movement in real time. Herein, we designed a multifunctional semi-interpenetrating network (semi-IPN) hydrogel patch loaded with liposomes of fermented Artemisia argyi (LF), constructing a “dual-lock” release system to simultaneously achieve sustained transdermal delivery of XOD inhibitors and intelligent monitoring of joint disease progression. Fermented A. argyi extract, which exhibited a 2.34-fold increase in XOD inhibitory activity (77.9%), was formulated into liposomes (∼188 nm) to construct the “first lock” of the delivery system. Subsequently, LF was encapsulated within a sodium alginate/polyacrylamide (SA/PAM) network via a one-pot method to engineer the 1.5-SA/PAM@LF hydrogel; acting as the second “lock”, this dense macromolecular network significantly suppresses the initial burst release (24.1% at 6 h) and enables sustained transdermal drug delivery for over 36 h. The hydrogel exhibits excellent electromechanical performance (GF = 0.8), excellent cyclic stability over 500 cycles, and a tissue-compliant Young’s modulus of ∼48 kPa. Furthermore, the hydrogel sensor achieves 99% accuracy for joint range-of-motion recognition using the proposed Short-Time Fourier Transform-Convolutional Neural Network model. We present an advanced wearable platform for integrated drug delivery and real-time joint health monitoring, paving the way for next-generation closed-loop digital healthcare in gout management.