What is Hyperhidrosis

1
Surrogate Measure of Hyperhidrosis
Student Name Francis Ku
Supervisor Dr. Andrew Bradley

• What is Hyperhidrosis?
• Uncontrolled, excessive sweating of the body
• Most common in areas like palms, arms, legs,
  armpits, groin and feet
• Two different forms of hyperhidrosis, primary
  and secondary
• Primary is only concerned with certain areas of
  the body
• Secondary effects your entire body
• This study focuses on a certain area of the
  body, palms
• Only primary hyperhidrosis is examined in this
  study
• Purpose of Study
• People who suffer from hyperhidrosis sweat
  excessively
• It can be due to the thermal condition,
  emotional stimulus or no apparent reason
• In extreme circumstances, people may have severe
  skin and microbial infections
• If there is deeper understanding, it can be
  quite beneficial to those who suffer from it and
  also those whom are searching for remedies

Monitoring and Quantifying Procedure Sympathetic
nerve study was apparent in this study, however
requiring invasive activity of human body would
not be possible. Hence a surrogate measure of
hyperhidrosis was carried out. Electrocardiograms
(ECG) and Pulse Transit Time (PTT) In attempt to
understand the relationship between heart
activity and sweating, electric potential of the
heart activity, ECG, and time difference for each
pulse, PTT, was acquired from subjects in relaxed
and stimulated state.
A chemical reaction takes place when it detects
sweat, skin turning dark purple colour in the
effected areas.
Matlab provides histogram function, allowing
quantification of the purple colour in the
picture taken.
Iodine Starch Quantification For further
analysis, the amount of sweat produced when the
subjects were stimulated were also recorded. This
was achieved by spreading iodine starch on the
palm.