Wiley:

The science behind the Gatorade Gx Sweat Patch and App

Press

The Gx Sweat Patch brings sweat testing, personalized sports fueling, and recovery recommendations to all athletes without requiring a traditional sports science lab. After years of hard work, Wiley recently published a scientific paper written by the Epicore Biosystems and Smart Design teams. Based on research findings, this post-market validation study details the deployment of the Gx microfluidic–based sweat patch across 148 recruited athletes.

Dehydration has many deleterious effects on cognitive and physical performance as well as physiological function, in the context of sports, industrial work, clinical rehabilitation, and military applications. Because sweat loss and electrolyte loss vary across individuals, conventional sweat testing strategies using absorbent patch techniques are employed in laboratory settings to characterize sweat biomarkers; however, these techniques are not suitable for remote environments. Here, an updated wearable microfluidic sweat testing system targeted for recreational athletes is presented that includes a microfluidic patch accommodating a broad range of sweating rates, and a smartphone app incorporating digital image processing algorithms to enable real-time analysis under different lighting conditions and patch orientations. Expansive field trials (n = 148 subjects) show significant correlations between the microfluidic patch and standard absorbent patch in measuring sweating rate and sweat chloride concentration during recreational exercise. This validation study demonstrates the applicability of the microfluidic patch and software platform for field testing in recreational athletes.

 

Read the full study on Wiley Online Library

Read the Gatorade Gx Sweat Patch case study.

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Jul 2022