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A novel sweat-based wearable device has demonstrated its potential to evaluate crucial markers of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) levels, as unveiled by recent findings presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024.

Current methods of monitoring IBD primarily rely on patient-reported symptoms or cross-sectional evaluations of blood, stool, imaging, or endoscopy. However, a novel wearable device could revolutionize this approach by providing real-time disease activity monitoring in a remote and passive manner.

According to the investigative team led by Shalini Prasad, Ph.D., from the University of Texas at Dallas, "TNF-α levels in the sweat of subjects with IBD correlate with serum values, suggesting feasibility in non-invasive disease monitoring."

Wearable technology has been widely implemented in managing chronic diseases, offering continuous measurement of non-invasive physiological variables such as heart rate, physical activity, and sleep. Sweat, identified as a promising biofluid, contains biomarkers crucial for monitoring IBD, including inflammatory proteins like C-reactive protein and cytokines like TNF-α and interleukin-1, and interleukin-625.

Until now, the predominant method for assessing sweat involved using an adhesive patch, which, while providing an efficient means of evaluating biomarkers, was hindered by its short-term application and lack of continuous monitoring capabilities.

To overcome limitations of previous methods, the research team developed a sweat-based wearable device capable of continuous sweat sampling for up to 5 days. This device, which utilizes non-faradaic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, provides real-time assessment of analyte concentrations sent to a smartphone application via Bluetooth, HCP Live reported.

In a study involving 28 participants, including IBD patients and healthy controls, the sweat-based device effectively measured TNF-α levels in sweat, demonstrating significant differences between IBD patients and controls.

The device showcased promising results, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.962, indicating its potential for distinguishing active IBD cases from healthy individuals. The study suggests that this sweat-sensing wearable device could offer a novel approach to remotely monitor key markers of IBD disease activity, warranting further investigation.

"This work suggests the feasibility of using a non-invasive sweat-sensing wearable device to monitor IBD disease activity," concluded Prasad and colleagues.