RECENT ADVANCES IN THE DIAGNOSTIC USEFULNESS OF SWEAT AS A BIOLOGICAL SAMPLE
Rajeswari S, Dhananjayan R and Swaminathan S*
ABSTRACT
As of date, the clinical usefulness of sweat analysis, except in some initial diagnosis for cystic fibrosis(CF) is limited. Sweat is one of the less employed biofluids for discovery of markers in spite of its increased application in medicine for detection of drugs or for diagnosis of CF. Available data on sweat as a biological material for the diagnosis of various disorders point out several discrepancies with respect to wide variations in sample collections, methods used for analysis, uniformity in standardizations and validation of results. National audits done in the past have pointed out several lacunae with respect to variations in the performance of sweat tests. Some recent advances in sweat analysis has established its usefulness to detect drugs of abuse as well as alcohol consumption by measuring its level in sweat. Measurement techniques such as HPLC and Mass Spectroscopy have established sweat testing as very clinically useful laboratory diagnostic tools for various diseases. Screening of neonates for various disorders using sweat is also an emerging laboratory diagnostic field as it uses non invasive technique. Sweat is also a convenient sample to screen for illicit drugs usage replacing blood and urine as testing material. Sweat is now being used to test lipids, electrolytes and for testing rare metals like Mercury, Lead, Arsenic & Cadmium as they accumulate in sweat during perspiration and is now found to be a route for elimination. Protein disorders and hormone deficiency such as cortisol could also be tested more reliably using sweat than other biological materials. This review article present the findings of research work in this filed during the last two decades.
Keywords: Sweat analysis, Cystic Fibrosis, CFTR, AMP, MPH
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