A new device aimed at detecting the warning signs of diseases caused by high levels of stress hormones has been developed by researchers in the UK and Europe

According to the scientific teams working at the University of Bristol, the University of Birmingham, and the University of Bergen in Norway, this is the first time it has been possible to measure changes to people’s stress hormones as they go about their daily lives.

The research looks set to potentially revolutionise how diseases of the stress hormone system are diagnosed and treated.

The technology, funded by an EU Horizon 2020 project grant and published in Science Translational Medicine in June 2023, shows how tracking adrenal steroid levels at high resolution and over an extended time period can provide better information about how hormone levels change across time periods.  

Stress hormones such as the hormone cortisol are crucial for life. Disturbance of their rhythms due to disease and lifestyle factors are related to diseases like depression, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and even critical illness.

However, until now, scientists haven’t been able to define what normal rhythmicity looks like in healthy daily life.  

The scientists said a major problem has been that understanding the meaning of a hormone test is very difficult or impossible if only a single time point is taken since this fails to consider hormonal rhythms. This, in turn, leads to diagnostic delays and missed opportunities for treatment intervention. Previously the only way to build an accurate picture has been to take multiple samples of blood during admission to a hospital or research unit, which is not only time-consuming and inconvenient but also stressful.  

The wearable device, known as the U-Rhythm, is worn around the waist and painlessly and automatically samples from beneath the skin every 20 minutes without the need to collect blood. Importantly, the method allows sampling during sleep, work, and other daily life activities for up to 72 hours in a single session. 

Mathematicians from the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine used the data to develop a new class of “dynamic markers” to better understand how a healthy hormonal profile should look like depending on an individual’s sex, age, body mass index, as well as other characteristics.  

These findings show what healthy hormonal rhythms look like in the population, in real-world settings, and could form a baseline for new, better ways to diagnose endocrine conditions at a much earlier stage. 

Stafford Lightman, Professor of Medicine at Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences (THS) and a co-author on the study, explained: “Our results provide significant new insights into how the stress hormone system works in healthy people and emphasises the importance of measuring change, not just sampling at single points. It also highlights the importance of measuring hormones during sleep, which has previously been impossible outside of a hospital.

“The ability to measure the dynamics of hormone secretion across the day and night in patients in their own home will not only improve our ability to accurately diagnose any abnormality in hormone secretion without the need for complex inpatient investigations but the whole diagnostic procedure can be performed from primary care and linked to newly available diagnostic algorithms. This will not only provide good, personalised medicine but will also allow the patient to follow their own hormone profiles during diagnosis and therapy and empower better patient: doctor discussions.

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