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A team of international researchers recently unveiled a nano array that can identify the chemical signatures of 17 different diseases, possibly bringing us closer to the day when doctors might be able to use a medical tricorder a la Star Trek to instantly diagnose a patient's conditions.
Though it isn't exactly a new idea – Hippocrates wrote about the correlation between breath odors and disease back in 400 B.C. and traditional Chinese medicine has long seen halitosis as an indication of an unbalanced qi – using breath tests to diagnose and monitor bodily disorders and disease is a research field that has been gaining momentum in recent years. And for good reason too. It would be the ultimate diagnostic test – potentially inexpensive and painless (not to mention a godsend for anyone with a fear of needles), and it would be able to deliver results fairly quickly too.
That said, in order for this to happen, breathalyzers need to be able to identify more than one disease at any given time. The technologies developed to date have a limited scope and are designed to detect only one kind of disease, such as a particular type of cancer or diabetes. And while there have been attempts to identify a wider scope of ailments, there has been no real breakthrough at distinguishing different diseases in a breath sample – till now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 26 2016, @03:38PM
The dogs require fairly extensive training, to learn to identify a single disease.
This thing can identify 17 different diseases, all at the same time. If it fails to alert on you, then you can be fairly sure that you don't have any of those 17 diseases. The algorithms can be installed into breathalyzers pretty quickly. There is no hint how much time it takes to build a breathalyzer, but it's surely a much shorter time than training one dog to sniff one disease.
Now that they've figured out how to do this much, an all-purpose breathalyzer mey be coming. Breathe in, and it tells you EVERYTHING that is wrong with your metabolism. We can expect to see them installed in shopping malls, like sphygmomanometers in the '80's. Insert credit card, debit $10, and get a printout that tells you that alcohol consumption is kicking your ass, along with a kidney infection, bronchitis, and an infected cut on your elbow.