Wearable interstitial fluid sensing of time-resolved uric acid for early prediction of flare-associated pain in an induced mouse model.

Skin-attachable interstitial fluid sensing in an induced mouse gout model shows flare-associated pain is preceded by time-resolved ISF uric acid patterns, not by any single UA concentration.

• Why it matters: Single time-point serum UA measurements miss the biochemical dynamics before flare onset and cannot explain when severe pain emerges.
• What they did: The team built an enzyme-based electrochemical ISF UA sensor with a thin insertion electrode and battery-free NFC, then modeled HUA, MSU-only inflammation, and gouty arthritis flare conditions and trained machine learning on ISF UA time-series features.
• The result: The gouty arthritis flare group showed UA fluctuation patterns not reproduced by either HUA or MSU-only inflammation alone, and machine learning using features before peak pain predicted pain progression better than analyses using earlier sustained decreases in paw withdrawal threshold.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.