Sarah Boseley
A revolutionary device that will tell a doctor what is wrong and which drugs to prescribe from the smell of the patient’s breath is being developed by a team of top scientists at one of Britain’s leading universities.
Development of the diagnostic breathalyser is being compared to the invention of the thermometer. Within a few years, not just every general practitioner but every home could have one.
So sure are the scientists from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, of the importance of their project that two weeks ago they took the unprecedented step of launching an all- British company called BodiTech to develop the hand-held machine which they believe will save the world billions of dollars and safeguard the future of antibiotics.
Peter Openshaw, a specialist in respiratory medicine, honorary consultant physician at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and one of the Imperial team, said the device would tell the doctor whether antibiotics would help or not. “It will not only tell the difference between a virus [on which antibiotics have no effect] and bacteria, but it will tell the doctor which type of bacteria is present and which antibiotic will be of most help,” he says.
Over-prescribing would stop as patients would be able to read their own breathalyser and recognise that antibiotics were not required.
Asthma affects up to 20% of children and about 5% of adults. The infection it causes in the lungs gives off vapours which the breathalyser could detect and measure. “It will tell you whether the inhaled steroid level should be adjusted,” says Openshaw.
The future looks even more extraordinary, if the scientists are right. There is a recognised smell associated with liver failure which even has a name – foetor hepaticus. Patients with renal failure have a musty smell. Diabetics with high sugar levels might be able to blow into the box three times a day instead of sampling their blood.
As with most good ideas, the concept is old. In medieval times, odours were used in diagnosis. But it took the inspiration of the man they now call “the father of the electronic nose” to turn ancient wisdom into a potential breakthrough.
Biochemist George Dodds is a world authority on odour and olfaction science. In 1970, he published the first description of a sensor system that could lead to the manufacture of an artificial nose. He is now research and development director of Kiotech International, the British company that will hold 51% of BodiTech to Imperial’s 49%.
Imperial is putting in the expertise of top scientists in seven or more different fields, from electrical engineering to biochemistry to medicine. The first clinical trials are expected within two years and the first devices ready within five years. The market is calculated to be potentially worth stlg13-billion worldwide, for medical purposes alone.