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Sniffing Out Cancer
Makarand writes "Researchers at the Univeristy of Rome are developing an
electronic nose that
can sniff out cancer by sampling people's breath. The instrument uses sensors
that respond to the presence of chemical compounds in the patient's breath.
For example, lung cancer patients exhale alkanes and benzene derivatives
which the electronic nose will try to detect. The sensors are quartz crystal
sensors coated with a substance that binds to a range of organic chemicals.
If certain molecules in the breath bind to this surface coating they change
the natural vibration frequency of the crystal."
"can sniff out cancer by sampling people's breath."
;-)
Yeah, it is called cigarette smoke, and we've known it is a carcinogen for 40 years now. I do have trouble identifying which stench is the benzyne, and which is the nicotine though
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I think this will just pave the way for more social and economic discrimination for cancer patients (eg, insurance, housing, etc).
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
would they sample to check for colon cancer?
Cheap tests are what HMOs love. If this test could be run for $5 a patient, they could add it to twice-yearly checkup for people over 55 and catch tumors when they are small and more cheaply removed. I kinda shrug when they invent new million dollar procedures for helping with a disease as they won't be in widespread use for many years, but cheap accurate tests like these could be saving thousands of lives a year, in just a few years. This seems very cool.
It seems likely it comes at a cost though. The accuracy of chemical detection they are talking about would make for some damnably accurate breath and air analysis tools. I certainly hope we resolve our most recent bout of prohibition in the states before Breathalyzers that can detect days old residue in the lungs are on the hip of every officer in the state.
Electronic nose could sniff out lung cancer
.
TARA WOMERSLEY HEALTH CORRESPONDENT
A REVOLUTIONARY electronic "nose" can detect lung cancer simply by sniffing people's breath, scientists claim.
The invention, known as an e-nose, could have major implications for the early diagnosis of the commonest cause of cancer deaths
The device has been developed at the University of Rome, and, while still in its early stages, has successfully detected every lung cancer patient it was used on during a trial.
Like a real nose, the electronic version uses an array of sensors that are not designed to detect any one chemical. Instead they respond to the overall profile of compounds in a sample. Such sensors are already used in the food industry to spot subtle off smells and tastes.
A variety of conditions can lead to specific compounds turning up in the breath. This can include aliphatic acids in the breath of people with liver cirrhosis, and dimethylamine or trimethylamine in the breath of those with failing kidneys.
Lung cancer patients exhale a cocktail of alkanes and benzene derivatives, although the reason for this is unclear.
According to a report in New Scientist magazine, which looked at the efficacy of the "nose", quartz crystal sensors were used which were each coated with a varying substance that binds to a different range of organic chemicals. The crystals' natural vibration frequency is related to their weight, so this changes as molecules from the sample stick to their coated surface, says the report.
Because of this a complex gas sample such as human breath will create a unique profile of vibrations from a range of crystals.
Scientists tested the e-nose on 60 people at the Forlanini Hospital in Rome, including 35 waiting for an operation to remove a large lung tumour. Each test took just over a minute and the nose successfully pinpointed every cancer patient, according to New Scientist.
Experts are now looking at ways of boosting the nose's sensitivity to the point where it can detect tumours at an early stage. If successful, this would mean that doctors would no longer have to use an invasive instrument called a bronchoscope to look inside a patient's lungs and, in some cases, remove a tissue sample.
Carrado Di Natale, the head of the e-nose development team, believes a super-sensitive version of the device might in future be used routinely to screen smokers and other high-risk groups for lung cancer.
"It would be less accurate than bronchoscopy but it would be so much easier," he said.
A total of 1,720 women died from lung cancer in Scotland in 2000 compared to 1,116 deaths from breast cancer.
And while the incidence of lung cancer among men is declining, experts have predicted that it will only start to level off among women between 2010 and 2014.
In Scotland the survival rate at five years for lung cancer is between 6 per cent and 7 per cent compared to 70 per cent for breast cancer.
Smoking and passive smoking causes nine out of ten lung cancers. On average 94 people die every day from lung cancer in the UK.
Richard Sullivan, the head of clinical programmes at Cancer Research UK, said that while smell was important for detecting a disease he was sceptical about the efficiency of the e-nose.
He said: "Smell is very important for detecting disease and this is an interesting twist. But this study is much too small to mean anything."
He added that even a highly sensitive nose could only detect surface tumours, and would never replace the blood tests or scans which alert doctors to the onset of secondary cancers.
Researchers in Cambridgeshire are looking to develop a technique using dogs to detect prostate cancer.
The 12-month project will involve Alsatians and Labradors which will be trained to spot minute signs of cancer in urine samples. It is hoped that the dogs will be able to detect certain proteins that can be found in the blo
Just wait until they patent the idea.....
Anyone else think of snort when they said "sniff"?
Here's my cancer.rules
alert tcp $SMOKING $LUNGS -> $BODY any (msg:"CANCER Lung Cancer"; content:"stink breath"; nocase; flags:A+; classtype:dammit-cancer; sid:6227; rev:1;)
alert tcp $CHEW $MOUTH -> $BODY any (msg:"CANCER Mouth Cancer"; content:"gross spit"; nocase; flags:A+; classtype:dammit-cancer; sid:6228; rev:1;)
alert tcp $CELLPHONE $HAND -> $BODY any (msg:"CANCER Brain Tumor"; content:"crashing car"; nocase; flags:A+; classtype:dammit-cancer; sid:6239; rev:1;)
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
My grandmother did this for 20+ years. As head matron of a major metropolitan hospital, she learned that patients suffering from certain ailments exuded certain odors through their pores and often their breath too. My girlfriend, a nurse, told me something similar. The skin is one of the body's organs for expelling toxins, so it's no surprise that we can tell what toxins are in a person's body, for example, by sniffing them.
Pre-employment "drug" tests have been used to screen women for pregnancy, so I have no doubt that a cancer-detecting breathalyzer will be used to screen for other expensive conditions (or at least certify them as "pre-existing" and thus not covered by the company).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Discrimination against someone that gets a natural cancer ( is there such a thing ? ) is one thing, but discrimination against someone who drinks like a fish and smokes a pack a day is something else entirely
Sure would make the news easier to take from a dog than some weird machine.
There's also a more informative article on the Beeb, here.
It seems there might be a problem with false positives, but for such a non-invasive screening process, that isn't much of a drawback.
One of my grandmothers died of lung cancer and I lived with her during her last days. I could smell a light flowery fragrance every time she coughed.
I am surprised that someone actually thought of using this as test for cancer, although I did suspect a link earlier.
Dogs have been able to do this for a long time. Several (under controlled, restricted, scientific circumstances) tests show that they (the dogs) can be taught this - a lot easier and cheaper than trying to build an electronic nose.
... "Hey - it can be done"
But
I remember a couple of years ago seeing this documentary with a computer wine taster. It would sniff the vapors coming off of a glass of wine and identify the vintage. There are professional winetasters (humans) that do the same thing for a living ... needless to say they had one of these winetasters on the show and the computer was more accurate than him. I'm glad they found a practical application of this idea, since, although the technology was cool in this wine example it seemed rather pointless ... except to piss off the human winetaster.
Quoth:
2) Biosensors and Bioelectronics is not a very disciplined journal, AFAIK (those in the field please correct me if I've been misinformed); you find a lot of good work in second tier journals, don't get me wrong, but you also find a lot of crap.
3) My dad does measurements of breath alkanes; ethane is produced by oxidized fatty acids, so it is a marker for patients with high tissue free radicals (what some people call "oxidative stress" even though there is no reason to think it is harmful, in and of itself.) They are highly variable - diabetics, for example, exhale a lot of them.
4) "e-nose"? Anyone who'd use that name has to be a sheister.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
This technology has existed for quite a while...
Pubmed search will show that already several applications for this exists.
As a physician I am stunned that the pubmed database (text-only version here) is not used more by the public. Very stimulating!
Davak
Dogs can sniff skin cancer as melanomas.
Faith can move mountains. I prefer dynamite.
"natural vibration" "frequency" "crystal" Maybe it can heal my chakras, too.
Heisenberg might have been here.
... I remember interviewing a gent who was developing saliva testing techniques for the same purpose. His contention was that the digestive system affects and is affected by all the other systems in the body. The advantage is that it is also in contact with the external environment. As such it is a bellwether of interaction with the external environment (chemicals in air show up in saliva) and internal environment (breath, blood). A Google on "diagnosis using saliva" turns up some interesting stuff.
w w/465/textbook/otherprojects/senses_97/olfaction.h tml)
I'm not sure that sampling the breath is easier than sampling saliva but this site has a nice intro (http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/bae/research/blanchard/w
with a competitors technique here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6588
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Some diseases do produce characteristic smells.
Uncontrolled diabetes makes the breath smell a bit like nail varnish. Infections, liver disease and cancer also make distinct smells.
There is a big danger in using a test like this inappropriately for screening, as has already been aluded to.
Breast screening, prostate screening and even cervical cancer screening are all not good screening tests (as they stand at the moment). For cervical cancer, which is probably the best of the three for screening, you have to screen 1000 women for 35 years to prevent one death. You think about the extra cost, extra tests and all the pain and anxiety of all the people who get false positive results.
Screening is like wearing an elastic seatbelt. It gives you illusion of security, when in fact it gives you no real protection, and just adds inconvenience. Unlike an elastic seatbelt, there is no 'real' substitute. yet.
Just to make it more difficult, their is an entire industry set up around producing and promoting these 'elastic seatbelts'.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Ok, it was 9 years ago, but the subject of it changed from possibilities of sensors array processing to trying to cope with the fact that those sensors were exhibiting horrible sensibility drift over time.
Because the main problem with those sensors is that they are using a chemical compounds that binds the gas molecule. To simplify, the weight of the bound gas molecules increases the load of the crystal, thus affecting its frequency response.
The main problem of such a system is that the binding tends to have permanent effects, thus altering durably the sensor response over time, up until it becomes unusable or exhibit too different a behavior for its signal to be processed efficiently.
What usually happens is that a misinformed journalist just happens to hear about that "famous new electronic nose"...
But up to now, such noses failed to find any industrial applications, just because of the sensivity drift. I clearly remember reading some literature from that Di Natale guy 9 years ago, making the same bold claims.
If someone from the italian team reads /., I will be greatly interested by there take on the drift matter.
[Pruneau