2021 article

A Wearable Patch for Prolonged Sweat Lactate Harvesting and Sensing

2021 43RD ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), pp. 6863–6866.

By: T. Saha n , J. Fang n, M. Yokus n, S. Mukherjee n, A. Bozkurt n, M. Daniele n, M. Dickey n , O. Velev n 

co-author countries: United States of America πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
MeSH headings : Humans; Hydrogels; Lactic Acid; Sweat; Sweating; Wearable Electronic Devices
Source: Web Of Science
Added: April 25, 2022

Operating at low sweat rates, such as those experienced by humans at rest, is still an unmet need for state-of-the-art wearable sweat harvesting and testing devices for lactate. Here, we report the on-skin performance of a non-invasive wearable sweat sampling patch that can harvest sweat at rest, during exercise, and post-exercise. The patch simultaneously uses osmosis and evaporation for long-term (several hours) sampling of sweat. Osmotic sweat withdrawal is achieved by skin-interfacing a hydrogel containing a concentrated solute. The gel interfaces with a paper strip that transports the fluid via wicking and evaporation. Proof of concept results show that the patch was able to sample sweat during resting and post-exercise conditions, where the lactate concentration was successfully quantified. The patch detected the increase in sweat lactate levels during medium level exercise. Blood lactate remained invariant with exercise as expected. We also developed a continuous sensing version of the patch by including enzymatic electrochemical sensors. Such a battery-free, passive, wearable sweat sampling patch can potentially provide useful information about the human metabolic activity.