B Oston - already breathalyzers help police keep drunk drivers off the road. Now, they can become a quick and non-invasive way to diagnose diseases. A pair of scientists reported at the meeting of the American Chemical Society here today that they have developed a machine in minutes can detect trace compounds in the breath and the diagnosis of diseases such as diabetes, renal impairment, ulcers, and possibly cancer. Commercial versions of the instruments can be available in a few years.
To build their breath analyzer, chemist David Smith of Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, and Patrik Spanel, a physicist with the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague a piece of space technology spying on Earth. There are two decades, Smith and Keele colleagues developed an instrument known as a selected ion flow tube (SIFT) to analyze trace gases known to be present in interstellar gas clouds. The machine reacts with the test sample ions and feeds these products in a mass spectrometer. The unique chemical signals for each trace of compound are then compiled in a database.
For their work in progress, Smith and Spanel created a database for the breath of humans healthy and sick. They carefully selected ions which react with the volatile trace gases, but do not react with the abundant compounds in respiration, such as oxygen and nitrogen. The technique is so sensitive that scientists can distinguish tens of compounds at concentrations of only parts per billion. While the original SIFT machines are bulky table instruments, Smith said that in recent months, he and Spanel developed, a smaller portable version and tested with patients in the hospital.
When Smith and Spanel tested their device on patients with various disorders, the results are striking. Twenty patients with renal failure, for example, showed levels of ammonia and acetone over 10 times higher than in healthy controls, and researchers could monitor these levels fall back to normal patients received a dialysis treatment. Smith also said to be able to follow chemical markers of stress, diabetes and ulcers, and they say preliminary data suggest they may even be able to use the technique to detect bladder cancer prostate.
"These are very exciting results," said Michael Henchman, a chemist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. "The technique of David could be as important to medicine as MRI [magnetic resonance imaging]. "
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