Occupational Stress Monitoring Using Biomarkers and Smartwatches: A Systematic Review.

This article presents a systematic review of the literature concerning scientific publications on wrist wearables that can help to identify stress levels. The study is part of a research project aimed at modeling a stress surveillance system and providing coping recommendations. The investigation followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. In total, 38 articles were selected for full reading, and 10 articles were selected owing to their alignment with the study proposal. The types of technologies used in the research stand out amongst our main results after analyzing the articles. It is noteworthy that stress assessments are still based on standardized questionnaires, completed by the participants. The main biomarkers collected by the devices used in the selected works included: heart rate variation, cortisol analysis, skin conductance, body temperature, and blood volume at the wrist. This study concludes that developing a wrist wearable for stress identification using physiological and chemical sensors is challenging but possible and applicable.

Staphylococcus cohnii septicaemia in a patient with colon cancer.

A coagulase-negative staphylococcal strain was isolated from peripheral blood and central venous catheter blood of a febrile patient with cancer. This isolate, initially classified by a commercial test as Staphylococcus kloosii, was definitively assigned to Staphylococcus cohnii by physiological and molecular tests. The strain lacked virulence factors, such as biofilm production and haemagglutination, and was sensitive to the antibiotics tested. The data suggest that rare micro-organisms with low pathogenic potential can cause severe illness in cancer patients; reference identification is required, however, to describe correctly the epidemiological characteristics and virulence factors of these clinical isolates.