A ‘smart underwear’ to track farts. Why are scientists so interested in flatulence?

An intrepid team of scientists has created a “smart underwear”, a device designed to monitor flatulence by detecting hydrogen released by gut microbes. Led by Brantley Hall, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, the research team developed the tool as a new way to study the human microbiome. The device consists of a small sensor attached to the back of a pair of underwear that captures and records data on intestinal gas, basically farts.

Here's what to know about this invention that tracks gut bacteria health.

How does this 'smart underwear' function?

It's a wearable device co-created by Hall and his colleagues. The device is not truly an underwear but a wearable attachment that clips onto garments and uses chemical sensors to monitor intestinal gases, particularly hydrogen produced by gut microorganisms, according to a report by Scientific American.

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The “smart underwear” tracks the amount of hydrogen released when a person passes gas. In this way, it monitors the activity of gut bacteria within a person.

Hydrogen is typically produced when certain gut microbes break down undigested food. While the concept may seem unusual, early tests show the device can identify dietary changes with up to 94.7 per cent accuracy.

Researchers say this approach could be more effective than traditional methods such as analysing blood, stool or breath samples. This smart device also features a battery that lasts up to a week on a single charge, without compromising comfort for the wearer.

Santiago Botasini, PhD, an assistant research scientist, who one of the authors of the study, said, "The smart underwear comfortably attaches to the exterior of the user's underwear near the perineal region via a snap system, in which a small plastic snap on the inside of the underwear fabric fits into a corresponding hole on the Smart Underwear on the opposite side of the underwear."

"Once attached, the smart underwear passively captures hydrogen concentration in flatus, as well as temporal dynamics including the frequency and duration of flatus events, enabling longitudinal measurements of gut microbial metabolism,” he added.

What did researchers discover?

In their study, Hall and his team found that healthy adults pass gas an average of 32 times per day, though some did so only four times, while others reached 59 times per day. The research did not assess whether the gas was smelly or audible.

The team tested the smart underwear on 19 healthy adults, who wore the device in their underwear for a week during waking hours, except when they were exercising heavily or travelling.

In a separate experiment, 38 participants wore the device while following a low-fibre diet for four days. On the fourth day, researchers gave them fibre supplements that induced hydrogen gas production to test whether the smart underwear could detect the change.

As reported in a paper published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, the device successfully detected increased microbiome activity in the presence of fibre.

What did the scientist say about the discovery? 

"Objective measurement gives us an opportunity to increase scientific rigour in an area that's been difficult to study," said Hall. "Think of it like a continuous glucose monitor, but for intestinal gas."

"We don't actually know what normal flatus production looks like. Without that baseline, it's hard to know when someone's gas production is truly excessive," Independent quoted him as saying.

Led by Brantley Hall, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, the research team developed the tool as a new way to study the human microbiome. Image courtesy: @brantleyhall/X

"We've learned a tremendous amount about which microbes live in the gut, but less about what they're actually doing at any given moment," he said.

The smart Underwear is only the beginning. Hall has also launched the Human Flatus Atlas, a project aimed at tracking and measuring flatulence. The research particularly focuses on individuals who consume high-fibre diets yet pass gas infrequently, as well as those who fart frequently, according to a media report.

"The Human Flatus Atlas will establish objective baselines for gut microbial fermentation, which is essential groundwork for evaluating how dietary, probiotic or prebiotic interventions change microbiome activity," said Hall in a statement.

With inputs from agencies