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Scientists Develop a Breathalyzer That Detects 17 Diseases With One Breath From a Patient (qz.com)
randomErr quotes a report from Quartz: In the last 10 years, researchers have developed specific sniff tests for diagnosing tuberculosis, hypertension, cystic fibrosis, and even certain types of cancer. A group of global researchers led by Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology have taken the idea a step further. They've built a device -- a kind of breathalyzer -- that is compact and can diagnose up to 17 diseases from a single breath of a patient. The breathalyzer has an array of specially created gold nanoparticles, which are sized at billionths of a meter, and mixed with similar-sized tubes of carbon. These together create a network that is able to interact differently with each of the nearly 100 volatile compounds that each person breaths out (apart from gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide). Haick's team collected 2,800 breaths from more than 1,400 patients who were each suffering from at least one of 17 diseases (in three classes: cancer, inflammation, and neurological disorders). Each sample of the disease was then passed through the special breathalyzer, which then produced a dataset of the types of chemicals it could detect and in roughly what quantities. The team then applied artificial intelligence to the dataset to search for patterns in the types of compounds detected and the concentrations they were detected at. As they report in the journal ACS Nano, the data from the breathalyzer could be used to accurately detect that a person is suffering from a unique disease nearly nine out of ten times.
their promises didn't turn out so well for the investors
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Here is the list of detected diseases from the source report. ;
lung cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, gastric cancer, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, idiopathic Parkinson’s, atypical Parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis, pulmonary arterial hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and chronic kidney disease.
Halitosis.
Have gnu, will travel.
is "nanometer" outside the vocabulary range of their normal readers? o_O
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
We've known dogs can accurately detect several cancers by smelling a person's breath for almost a century. India is beginning to use rats (they're easier to train and have a more sensitive nose) as an auxiliary screening system for things like tuberculosis, with results generally more accurate than screenings by human experts. And he sensitivity of electronic "noses" has been advancing rapidly, so it seems perfectly reasonable that they could achieve similarly impressive results, with the added advantage that they offer objective, quantitative results that lend themselves to easy analysis and lookup, without any individual training needed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The summary only gives the rate for people that have the disease, if you want to know the false positive rate you'll have to read the actual report.
Also, the article says they consider it a good proof of concept but still far away from being used in actual diagnosis.
Either that or we have just found new and more innovative methods to fleece rich investors of money, see Theranos or cold fusion in a shipping container, the article reads like a marketing slide for investors with zero 3rd party verification and the statement that they need more research and development to get the accuracy and bring to market. I hope they are real as such a device could be of massive benefit but I would not hold my breath till I see some proof from someone other than themselves.
I've been working in this field for a long time. If you look around the literature, you'll see my name on several papers on nanoelectronic detection of disease via breath. This is a great demo, and Haik is a very good guy in this field, but he's done only the easiest part. I've learned the hard way that publishing an academic paper and making something that doctors actually would buy to make treatment decisions are completely different things. This is the first step in the development process, not the last.
In this case, there are already medical breath tests, and entire clinics devoted to this kind of medical test (without the nanotech part). The tools are already cleared for use, and medical doctors have protocols and billing methods for using them. If the key part of this is really those 13 compounds, there's no need for nano wizardry; use the mass spec or whatever that the clinic already has. That's really the key here, why would anyone use his device, and not just his results? Often in sensor research, we don't understand the distinction there when the results get us such great publications and press. The grant manager paid for the nanotechnology (and the citations that come with it), but everyone else is interested in the medicine.
As a hypochondriac I'd be scared to take this test. Best case, I have one or all of these diseases. Worst case, I have no clue what I'm dying from.
Reminds me of this old joke.
This is off topic, but worth a response. I've been to prison (hence the AC post), and I can tell you first hand that the health care in prisons is just as, if not more so, inadequate as the food. It is sad that the average food expenditure for inmates in the prison I was in was less that $1.25/day as reported by the state, while the guard dogs got almost $4/day, health care costs are worse. Treatment is given by unqualified doctors with medical degrees from over seas, or people who couldn't get a job anywhere else in health care because they suck so bad. We had one doctor nicknamed "Dr. Death" because he constantly mistreated inmates and would kill a couple every year. The bodies piled up, but nobody cared because only criminals were dieing. Mental health treatment is even worse. Inmates with mental health issues are very commonly given large doses of anti-psychotics, seroquil, clozapine, and thorazine just to keep them in unconscious or barely conscious. I saw a lot of guys with the thorazine shuffle because they had been taking it for extended periods of time. The psych ward was full of guys pissing and crapping on them selves because of the drugs, who were not taken care of or cleaned up. U.S. Prison health care is a disgrace.
Care is very odd though, while inmates were being overdosed, misdiagnosed, even killed, transsexual men who were on hormone injections before being convicted got state sponsored hormone injections for the duration of their incarceration. Someone sued to get their hormones, but no one sues because their father, brother, son, was killed in prison because they can't afford it or prove it as deaths are covered up.
I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder in prison, to deal with it the prison doctors prescribed huge doses of lithium which eventually lead to moderate/severe kidney problems. I'm working on 2 1/2 functional kidneys and if anything else goes wrong I will be on dialysis for the rest of my life. My nephrologist said I should have sued for malpractice, but no lawyer would take the case because suing the state never works.
Say what you will about convicted criminals not deserving X, Y or Z because they are the worst people on the planet and should be left to rot, but they are still people, humans, who deserve to be treated better than the dogs used to guard them.