Researchers from the Technion-Institute of Technology of Israel have just developed a diagnostic tool equipped with a chip capable of detecting in the breath the main volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of 17 diseases, including lung cancer, colon, neck and head, of the ovary, bladder, prostate, kidney and stomach, but also the Crohn’s diseaseulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson disease or the multiple sclerosis. The first tests are encouraging because the diagnosis of the chip would be 86% reliable.
Diseases leave their mark on the breath
We already knew that diseases leave a characteristic imprint in the breath, urine or blood in the form of micro-molecules (the famous volatile organic compounds). This makes it possible to use the extremely developed sense of smell of dogs to detect certain cancers such as Prostate cancer where the breast cancer.
This new tool is equipped with nanoparticles capable of detecting the particular combinations of VOCs specific to each disease. But more studies are needed on more patients to see if this application can be used on a larger scale in medicine.
This study was published in the ACSNano review.
Read also :
Breast cancer diagnosis: zoom on the diagnosis in one day
A new minute test to identify Parkinson’s disease
