Old and New Approaches for Assessing Sweating.

Abstract

The evaluation of sweating activities contributes to both medical services and social living. There are several old and new approaches for assessing sweating. These methods are mainly composed of adopted techniques that focus on detecting small amounts of water on the skin surface. For many years, the iodine-starch reaction has been applied in various settings to evaluate sweat on the skin surface. However, methodology based on the coloration of sweat is in a constant state of evolution, and multiple advancements have been made. Furthermore, common fingerprinting is not just used for obtaining personal-identifying information anymore as it can also provide scientifically important information for sweat-pore mapping and sweat-component analysis. Additionally, there are multiple techniques for the quantitative measurement of sweat volume and dynamic intravital imaging of sweat, and these are also continually evolving. This chapter provides an overview of the old and new approaches for assessing sweating.