An electronic nose could distinguish between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, Spanish researchers have reported.
The Moosy 32 eNose achieves 90% accuracy and would be a non-invasive test for the two diseases, according to the researchers at Valencia Polytechnic University.
The ‘nose’ analyses volatile organic compounds and has so far been tested on 445 samples, the developers say. It can deliver a result in three minutes.
The researchers are looking for other medical uses for the device, thinking of prostate cancer as a possibility.
Researcher Dr Pilar Nos, who heads the digestive medicine department of La Fe Hospital, said: “Volatile organic compounds are created by physiological processes of the human body’s metabolism and are expelled as waste through faeces.
“The concentration of these components can be a differentiating marker between certain bowel diseases and their accurate detection by way of non-invasive devices such as the electronic nose would be a great step forward for the detection and monitoring of the evolution of these diseases.”
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