When we drink alcohol, its “flag” precedes us, and enjoyment of large amounts of garlic or onion can often be detected by others the next morning. However, our breath does not only betray what we have consumed; some diseases also produce telltale breath odors. Breath analysis has some interesting advantages for clinical diagnosis, for example, unlike drawing blood, it requires no puncture. However, it has proven to be difficult. The complexity of the equipment is considerable, the samples require complex preparation before the actual analysis can take place, and until now only small, volatile compounds have been reliably detected. Swiss researchers have now developed a mass-spectrometric method to quickly and easily obtain a proper fingerprint of breath, including the quantitative detection of large, nonvolatile compounds.>>> Discuss This Story
