Saliva, Sweat, and Exhaled Breath as Alternative Specimens for Exercise Chemistry: Analytical Advantages, Limitations, and Comparative Progress
Pang
The finding, in our words
This narrative review finds that saliva is best suited to repeated neuroendocrine and metabolic measurements during exercise, sweat is most mature for electrolyte and sweat-rate monitoring with wearable compatibility, and exhaled breath offers access to volatile metabolism but remains instrumentally demanding. Each matrix requires matching to a defined clinical or exercise question with matrix-specific validation before translational use.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
This review assesses wearable sensors for the continuous biochemical monitoring of body fluids such as sweat, saliva and interstitial fluid, confirming their potential for decentralised healthcare through pilot trials. It emphasises that successful clinical translation depends on large-scale validation and the integration of ethical and sociocultural considerations.
In 20 adults, CRP measured in urine and saliva strongly correlated with serum CRP (Spearman rho 0.886) and was significantly elevated in participants with systemic inflammation compared with controls, suggesting these noninvasive matrices could replace venipuncture for monitoring inflammatory status in remote or at-home settings.
Microsampling enables less invasive, patient-centric self-collection of capillary blood for remote monitoring of metabolites and lipids, overcoming conventional venipuncture constraints. Recent device innovations address dried blood spot limitations, particularly haematocrit and volume variations, expanding decentralised applications in population health, drug discovery and multi-omics research.
The study demonstrates that frequent collection of 10 microlitres of capillary blood, combined with wearable sensor data, enables simultaneous measurement of thousands of metabolites, lipids, cytokines and proteins, revealing individualised metabolic and inflammatory responses to dietary interventions and molecular fluctuations linked to intra-day changes in heart rate, glucose, cortisol and physical activity, supporting dynamic health profiling outside the clinic.