Dr Helen Hanstock, Teaching Fellow in Sports Physiology and Nutrition, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden, writes:
Non-invasive immune monitoring could be of particular use to athletes and military personnel undertaking strenuous training who may become immune-compromised and therefore be at increased risk of contracting an upper respiratory tract infections (URTI).
Like saliva, tears are a non-invasive medium that have the potential to be developed for bio-monitoring purposes. Unlike saliva, there has been no work done to-date on the potential of tears for bio-monitoring within my field of sport, health and exercise sciences. It is known that transmission of common colds can occur via contact with the eyes and nose, while the mouth and saliva appears to be more robust to common cold exposure. Therefore, we were interested to investigate the capability of tear SIgA analyses to predict common cold risk.
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