Stress Biomarkers Detection Using Non-invasive Methods for Textiles Integrated Sensors Development

Human emotions study through biomarkers is a recent field with high importance to all modern society. Imbalanced physiological parameters to external stimuli induce stress both physical as psychological that has been related to several diseases and discordant social behavior. This is particularly important for the military in order to attain better missions’ performance and the adjustment of operational conditions minimizing avoidable risks and undesirable post-operations psychological disorders. The current study is part of a project where civilian, military and business’ association researchers are united with the common goal to study and early detect stress biomarkers, through non-invasive methodologies (using sweat as target biological fluid), and able to operate in field with real-time monitoring and integrated in wearables. The military forces’ volunteers take part of a case-of-study that will allow making the proof-of-concept of the new proposed medical methodology. The current results were attained in the first phase of the project where sampling protocols and analytical techniques were optimized previously to a major sampling (with more individuals). From the attained results, it was possible to detect multiple potential stress biomarkers, including some already known (e.g. cortisol) in sweat and blood. The correlation between results attained in both fluids seems promising to continue to a larger sampling with statistical relevance.