A new device known as breathalyzer can diagnose one different disease. If you breathe into such a device, doctors will be able to establish your diagnose. Among those 17 disease specialists listed multiple sclerosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and lung cancer. A new study developed tested approximately 1,400 participants who came from 5 distinct countries to breathe into the newfangled breathalyzer.
- Researchers have developed a breathalyzer to diagnose several diseases.
- The new device is meant to differentiate between 17 illnesses.
- All the patient needs to do is to exhale into the device to examine the compounds of the breath.
The device is still in its testing phase. The accuracy with which this product is meant to identify a disease measures approximately 86%. The researchers who developed the study pointed out that the device is using the patient’s breath to diagnose an illness because every disease has a unique breathprint. To detect each condition, the breathalyzer examines some microscopic compounds known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Previous studies had also tested VOCs to establish certain diagnoses. Back in 400 B.C., physicians knew that the odors of the human body might help in establishing a diagnose for several types of illnesses. Researchers argue that back then doctors used to smell the urine and stools of child noblemen on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, scientists noted that analyzing exhaled breath is the easiest and cheapest method to reveal any compounds, avoiding examinations made on other bodily substances like blood and excrement which also contain VOCs. The breathalyzer developed by researchers had two nanolayers, one of them contained carbon and the other one did not.
The layer lacking carbon consisted of a network of nanotubes but also altered gold nanoparticles. Both of them offer electrical conductivity. In the meantime, the layer containing carbon functioned as a sensing layer, meant to retain the exhaled VOCs. When a participant in the study was tested, and he or she breathed into the new device, the VOCs of that person interacted with the organic sensing layer.
This has modified the electrical resistance of the sensors categorized as inorganic. If researchers managed to measure this resistance, they could have established which particular VOCs were present so that they could diagnose the disease. Experts noted that everyone’s exhaled breath contains hundreds of VOCs. Nevertheless, scientists needed to distinguish only 13 of them to differentiate between 17 conditions. For example, the VOC nonanal is connected to conditions like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease.
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