Wearable sweat patch uses pH to track blood glucose during exercise
Mar 10th 2026
Researchers report a flexible wireless sweat patch that measures glucose and pH and uses a new pH-based model to reconstruct blood glucose during exercise, with validation in healthy and diabetic participants.
- A flexible wireless skin patch simultaneously measures glucose and pH in sweat and reconstructs blood glucose in real time.
- The key advance is a pH-based correlation model that corrects for enzymatic activity and dilution that previously made sweat glucose unreliable.
- The platform was validated on both healthy people and patients with diabetes and captured distinct glucose dynamics during exercise and after different meals.
- The sensor uses laser-induced graphene electrodes decorated with gold nanoparticles for sensitivity and transmits data wirelessly to a smartphone.
- Researchers say the system can support diabetes management during exercise and may help detect metabolic patterns linked to prediabetes.
- The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by teams at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Penn State University, and King’s College London.