HMN 2025: How Wearable sweat sensor can detect responses to physical, emotional and pharmacological stress

Most people are well aware of the effects of chronic stress in the modern world. While some stress can be a good thing, like the type of stress your body feels during an intense workout, prolonged or chronic stress can lead to a myriad of health problems, including anxiety, heart disease, and inflammation. And, at a larger scale, the high prevalence of chronic stress in the population increases the burden on public health systems.

Tracking stress responses could help people better understand and manage stress, but stress can be difficult to measure and monitor in an objective and precise manner. Stress hormones fluctuate throughout the day, but current stress assessment methods rely on subjective self-reports, heart rate, or wearable sensors that only measure cortisol in a non-continuous manner. It is difficult to get a full picture of a person’s stress response and its long-term effects with these current methods.

However, scientists have recently developed a device called the “Stressomic,” a wearable biosensor that can continuously monitor cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine in sweat—which might just pave the way for better stress management. The device was recently tested in a study published in Science Advances. They claim that it’s capable of distinguishing between acute and chronic stress and can be worn as a simple biocompatible patch placed on the skin.

The study first validated the device using electrochemical assays and then in an on-body clinical trial consisting of three parts. In one part, the Stressomic was tested out while users completed a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) session to detect stress response to exercise. In another part, participants viewed stress-inducing images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), to test out psychological stress response measurement. And in the third part, users took a supplement containing taurine, ?aminobutyric acid (GABA), theanine, and magnesium, which is known to decrease stress.

The device performed well throughout the study, tracking hormone increases in response to the physical and psychological stressors and showing a decrease in stress hormones in response to the stress-reducing supplementation. The researchers noted that the device showed impressive sensitivity—at the picomolar-level—allowing for the detection of very low hormone concentrations. This is attributed to the use of gold nanodendrite–decorated laser-engraved graphene electrodes.

“In response to emotional stress, norepinephrine levels rose significantly, while cortisol exhibited a nonsignificant change. These findings corroborate prior studies, reinforcing the system’s ability to differentiate between physiological and psychological stress responses. In addition, the system tracked hormone reductions following supplement intake, demonstrating its ability to monitor changes in baseline regulation and therapeutic interventions,” the study authors write.

The Stressomic showed distinct temporal patterns for each hormone, allowing for the distinction of different kinds of responses over time, and may be improved even further by increasing the number of sampling chambers for longer-term monitoring.

According to the authors, the device shows a lot of promise in applications across the fields of mental health, sports, and personalized stress management and intervention. They say, “Stressomic introduces a transformative and noninvasive solution for real-time stress hormone monitoring. Its integration of microfluidic technology and flexible electronics allows for continuous hormone monitoring across physical, emotional, and pharmacological contexts, with broad applications in health monitoring and human performance management.”

© 2025 Science X Network