I've just been reading an article in the December 7 2024 issue of New Scientist, called 'Dripping With Promise' (yuck), which says that 'more than 30,000 biomolecules have been detected in sweat, ranging from metabolites such as glucose and lactic acid to peptides, proteins, vitamins, inflammatory molecules, hormones and neurotransmitters.' It says that sweat is derived from blood plasma and the interstitial fluid between cells, but also that the concentrations of the compounds in sweat don't always correlate closely with those in the blood. I see that a study in Massachusetts is already recruiting PwME to see if sweat and saliva can be used to produce a diagnostic test. But I wonder if there might be more than the obvious applications. On another thread, we were discussing how to get bone marrow samples, and discovering that it was incredibly difficult. If what we wanted from bone marrow doesn't show up in blood, does that mean it won't show up in sweat either? I'm not sure what cells the article is talking about when it talks about interstitial fluid. But I'm also thinking that this could be fantastically useful for continuous monitoring, especially in severely ill PwME. Not sure the tech is ready for prime-time at this level yet but it's already been commercialised for athletes and some of the stuff that they would want to know. A good sign that ME/CFS is among the first on the bandwagon in Massachusetts? Thoughts generally?
I think metabolic aspects could be investigated. We've had at least two canine-based "sweat-omics" studies — Detection of Post-COVID-19 Patients Using Medical Scent Detection Dogs—A Pilot Study (2022, Frontiers in Medicine) Screening for SARS-CoV-2 Persistence in Long COVID Patients using Sniffer Dogs and Scents from Axillary Sweats Samples (2022, Journal of Clinical Trials)
