Longitudinal assessment of sweat-based TNF-alpha in inflammatory bowel disease using a wearable device

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 2833 - 9
• Main Authors: Hirten, Robert P., Lin, Kai-Chun, Whang, Jessica, Shahub, Sarah, Helmus, Drew, Muthukumar, Sriram, Sands, Bruce E., Prasad, Shalini
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 03.02.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 692/4020/1503/257; 692/53/2423; C-reactive protein; Chronic illnesses; Gastrointestinal tract; Humanities and Social Sciences; Inflammatory bowel disease; Inflammatory bowel diseases; Intestine; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sweat; Tumor necrosis factor-TNF; Tumor necrosis factor-α; Wearable computers
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53522-1

Wearable devices can non-invasively monitor patients with chronic diseases. Sweat is an easily accessible biofluid for continuous sampling of analytes, including inflammatory markers and cytokines. We evaluated a sweat sensing wearable device in subjects with and without inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract. Participants with an IBD related hospital admission and a C-reactive protein level above 5 mg/L wore a sweat sensing wearable device for up to 5 days. Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) levels were continually assessed in the sweat via the sensor, and daily in the blood. A second cohort of healthy subjects without chronic diseases wore the device for up to 48 h. Twenty-eight subjects were enrolled. In the 16 subjects with IBD, a moderate linear relationship between serum and sweat TNF-α levels was observed (R 2  = 0.72). Subjects with IBD were found to have a mean sweat TNF-α level of 2.11 pg/mL, compared to a mean value of 0.19 pg/mL in 12 healthy controls ( p  < 0.0001). Sweat TNF-α measurements differentiated subjects with active IBD from healthy subjects with an AUC of 0.962 (95% CI 0.894–1.000). A sweat sensing wearable device can longitudinally measure key sweat-based markers of IBD. TNF-α levels in the sweat of subjects with IBD correlate with serum values, suggesting feasibility in non-invasive disease monitoring.