The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between pilocarpine-induced sweat rate obtained at rest and whole-body sweat rate during exercise. Eighteen healthy male volunteers (nine trained, nine sedentary) served as subjects. Each subject had his maximum oxygen uptake (JOURNAL/jscr/beta/00124278-199105000-00006/ENTITY_OV0312/v/2017-05-04T192840Z/r/image-pngO2 max) measured and his forearm peripheral sweat rate determined via pilocarpine iontophoresis. On a separate day, each subject exercised for 30 minutes at 70 percent JOURNAL/jscr/beta/00124278-199105000-00006/ENTITY_OV0312/v/2017-05-04T192840Z/r/image-pngO2 max, following which whole-body sweat rate was determined. The results showed that JOURNAL/jscr/beta/00124278-199105000-00006/ENTITY_OV0312/v/2017-05-04T192840Z/r/image-pngO2 max was linearly correlated with both whole-body sweat rate (r = 0.84) and pilocarpine-induced sweat rate (r = 0.83). Furthermore, whole-body sweat rate and peripheral sweat rate were linearly related (r = 0.86). These results suggest that pilocarpine-induced sweat rate can serve as a meaningful index of eccrine sweat gland function during exercise. These findings have implications both on a mechanistic and applied level, and support the hypothesis that the increase in sweating seen following training is achieved via a peripheral mechanism.
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Buono et al. (1991) studied this question.