In a first, Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children has introduced sweat chloride testing for children, adolescents, and young adults to confirm or rule out the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis. It is a progressive, genetic disease leading to persistent lung infections and breathing problems.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder impacting the cells involved in making mucus, sweat, and digestive fluids. The symptoms of CF are salty skin or sweat, sinusitis, wheezing, persistent cough, diarrhea, lung infections like pneumonia, bronchitis, and weight loss, greasy and bulky stools. A thorough diagnosis of cystic fibrosis in children and adults can help in achieving good outcomes, as treatment must be given soon to improve the survival rates and the course of the disease. To address this need, Wadia Hospital introduces sweat chloride testing to measure the amount of chloride in one’s sweat to detect this fatal condition as those with CF have increased levels of chloride in their sweat.

CF is a complex disease that takes a toll on the respiratory and digestive systems. Every year more than 100 new children seek workup and treatment for CF at Wadia Hospital. The department of Pulmonology at Wadia has introduced sweat chloride testing for patients with suspected cystic fibrosis. This is the state-of-art and most advanced way of testing sweat chloride levels in the entire western region of India. This test is carried out in children, adolescents, and young adults with long-standing diseases like bronchiectasis, recurrent pneumonia, and failure to thrive amongst other symptoms, to rule out the diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis.

Dr Parmarth Chandane who manages the Paediatric respiratory department at Wadia hospital added, “One will be asked to undergo the tests when there is a family history of cystic fibrosis or symptoms pointing towards Cystic Fibrosis. Before this test, any creams and lotions should not be applied to the skin for 24 hours.  The sweat test can be helpful to determine the amount of chloride ions in sweat. Those with cystic fibrosis can have a high amount of chloride in their sweat. In a sweat test, the patient’s skin is stimulated to generate sweat that is absorbed into a special collector, the test gets over in half an hour, and then the analysis is done. If the patient is detected with a high chloride level of more than 60 millimoles per litre, then there is a likelihood of cystic fibrosis. This gold standard test is relatively cheap and results are available immediately as compared to the genetic test (where the results will be available only after 3-4 weeks and come at an extremely prohibitive cost)”.