Measurement of cytokines in sweat patches and plasma in healthy women: Validation in a controlled study

Cytokines have been detected by ELISA in a variety of body fluids. Recycling immunoaffinity chromatography (RIC) coupled with laser-induced fluorescence detection is a highly sensitive and specific method, which allows simultaneous measurements of many analytes in small volumes of biological fluids. This method has been applied to plasma, cervical secretions and other body fluids, but has not previously been applied to sweat. The aim of this study was to validate the RIC methodology in sweat for measurements of IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, IL-8 and TGF-β. Two sweat patches were applied for 24 h on the torso, and blood was collected at one time point during this period in nine healthy women. Cytokines were measured in paired samples of plasma and sweat. Cytokines were detected in sweat in similar concentrations to plasma. Linear regression analysis confirmed that sweat levels of these cytokines accounted for a large percentages of variance in plasma levels: IL-1α (R2 = 0.70, p = 0.005), IL-1β (R2 = 0.79, p = 0.003), IL-6 (R2 = 0.52, p = 0.03), TNF-α (R2 = 0.95, p < 0.0001), IL-8 (R2 = 0.81, p = 0.001) and TGF-β (R2 = 0.94, p = 0.0003). These findings indicate that cytokine levels measured in sweat are informative of circulating levels and that sweat patches combined with RIC represents a viable non-invasive method to measure cytokines in ambulatory settings over time. This method is unobtrusive and requires minimal active compliance on the part of the subjects being studied, without pain or stress. This approach can open a new generation of studies to address the effects of environmental factors on immune responses in a wide range of different settings.