While most patients would likely prefer sweat sampling over blood collection because it is significantly painless, patients oftentimes need to be physically active to induce the sweat necessary to obtain sufficient nutrients or hormones for testing. However, this could potentially be challenging for those with limited mobility.

Source: KIST

As such, the team developed a new device that, unlike other similar devices, does not require physical activity to encourage sweating but instead delivers drugs through the skin to stimulate sweat glands.

According to the researchers, the flexible device, which can easily be attached to the skin, delivers drugs to sweat glands by applying a current to a hydrogel containing the drugs. As the drug encourages sweat, microfluidic channels within the device collect the sweat and the sample is subsequently analyzed for biomarkers via biosensors.

Its developers suggest that the new device allows for the accurate analysis of sweat biomarkers while simultaneously reducing the need for hospital visits and minimizing the risk of biomarker contamination during testing.

In the lab, the new device was trialed on infants with cystic fibrosis, where it effectively measured chloride concentrations — a key sweat biomarker — with a rate of accuracy of over 98%.

The researchers suggest that in addition to collecting sweat samples, the device’s drug delivery component could also potentially be used to enhance the delivery rate of drugs to localized areas, such as in treating skin conditions or wounds, thus expediting recovery.

The new device is detailed in the article, “A skin-interfaced, miniaturized platform for triggered induction, capture and colorimetric multicomponent analysis of microliter volumes of sweat,” which appears in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.