Overview
- A University of Maryland team built a prototype hydrogen sensor that attaches to underwear to log flatulence as a marker of gut-microbiome activity.
- Peer-reviewed results in Biosensors and Bioelectronics report an average of 32 daily events among 19 healthy adults.
- Recorded counts ranged from 4 to 59 per day, roughly double prior self-reported estimates that likely missed nocturnal events.
- Participants wore the device about 11 hours per day for roughly a week, so the findings are early and limited in scope.
- The researchers plan to recruit hundreds of U.S. adults for a larger dataset in the proposed Human Flatus Atlas.