Sweat Enables Easy Disease Monitoring

The child's left arm is attached with conventional wired equipment used in hospitals, while the right arm has the developed device adhered to the skin to deliver a drug that stimulates the sweat glands. Photo by KIST

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The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Osangrok) announced that a joint research team led by Dr. Kim Juhee from the Bionics Research Center and Professor John A. Rogers from Northwestern University has developed a convenient sweat monitoring device that requires no exercise through transdermal drug delivery. Unlike previous methods that induced sweat through exercise, this method induces sweat by delivering drugs that stimulate sweat glands through the skin.

Sweat contains biomarkers that can monitor various health conditions ranging from diabetes to genetic disorders. Sweat collection is preferred by users because it is painless compared to blood collection; however, to obtain sufficient nutrients or hormones from sweat for testing, intense exercise was required to produce enough sweat. This method posed difficulties for people with limited exercise capabilities.

The research team developed a flexible device that delivers drugs to the sweat glands beneath the skin by passing an electric current through a hydrogel containing the drugs. This device is small and soft, allowing easy attachment to the skin, and the sweat induced by the drugs is collected in microfluidic channels within the device to monitor physiological conditions through biosensors. By analyzing biomarkers in sweat simply by attaching the device, it reduces the inconvenience of visiting a hospital for testing and lowers the possibility of biomarker contamination during the testing process, thereby improving accuracy.

Schematic diagram and actual photo of a wearable device capable of simultaneous skin drug delivery to induce sweating and disease monitoring through sweat

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When the research team attached the developed device to a baby suffering from cystic fibrosis and measured the chloride concentration, a biomarker in sweat, the results matched more than 98% with those diagnosed using conventional analysis methods after sweat collection at a hospital. They also confirmed skin temperature and skin pH levels to ensure the device's safety on the skin. Since cystic fibrosis mainly manifests in infancy and requires continuous monitoring of disease progression and physical condition, the device allows easy monitoring at home, which is expected to reduce the mental and physical stress of infant patients and their caregivers.

The newly developed device enables healthy adults to conveniently monitor sweat biomarkers without separate exercise, contributing to the expansion of sweat-based devices as a non-invasive disease monitoring technology. Additionally, the technology of delivering drugs through the skin can not only induce sweat but also increase drug delivery rates in localized areas requiring drug administration, such as skin diseases and wounds, thereby accelerating recovery.

Dr. Kim Juhee of KIST stated, “This research achievement not only overcomes the limitations of existing sweat induction methods in developing sweat monitoring devices but also succeeded in clinical research, bringing us one step closer to commercialization.”

This study was published online in the latest issue of the international journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics (IF 12.6).

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