An observational study for detection and quantification of interferon- γ in sweat toward inflammation monitoring
By Kothari, Aashay; Jagannath, Badrinath; Muthukumar, Sriram; Prasad, Shalini
Published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X
2022
Abstract
This work demonstrates the quantification and detection of interferon- γ (IFN-γ), a key inflammatory biomarker in sweat using a flexible, nanoporous sweat sensor. IFN-γ is a pro-inflammatory cytokine released during the innate and adaptive response to enable antibacterial/antiviral immunity to an infection. Further, IFN-γ is critical marker to combat cancer through anti-tumor and pro-apoptotic mechanism. Therefore, real-time, continuous monitoring of pro-inflammatory cytokines can aid clinicians in active feedback on the administered therapeutic regimen. However, conventional blood-based laboratory methods are not feasible for continuous monitoring while sweat-based monitoring allows to continuously track the biomarker level in a point-of-need setting. This work demonstrates a sweat sensor device for rapid and accurate detection of IFN-γ in human sweat with less than 10% of variation. Highly sensitive and selective detection of IFN-γ with a limit of detection of 1 pg/mL and dynamic range of 1–512 pg/mL using impedance spectroscopy. The sensor demonstrated minimal to no signal response to non-specific cytokines. The performance of sweat sensor was further validated by comparing to state-of-art reference method and a Pearson's correlation of r > 0.95 was achieved in an observational study comprising of human subject samples confirming the reliability of the sweat sensor to report sweat IFN-γ levels. The promising findings from this work demonstrate the viability of utilizing the detection of IFN-γ in sweat for several inflammatory diseases such as cancer. Detection of IFN-γ in sweat will be pivotal in monitoring and aiding physicians in administering precision treatment strategies for patients diagnosed with cancer through continuous monitoring of immune status.