Newly-Developed ‘E-Nose’ Could Diagnose Parkinson’s Early By ‘Smelling’ Skin

When Parkinson’s disease begins to be noticeable—with observable symptoms such as loss of muscle control and difficulty moving—it’s often reached an advanced stage that’s challenging to treat.

Now, in an attempt to help doctors detect the illness at an earlier stage, researchers  at China’s Zhejiang University have come up with an “electronic nose” or “e-nose” that “smells” skin to sniff out the disease.

The e-nose works by detecting a distinctive odor secreted by people with Parkinson’s, as their skin creates a higher-than-normal amount of sebum, an oily substance produced by our sebaceous glands.

Sebum produced by those with the disease contains abnormal levels of particular organic compounds not present in healthy individuals, allowing the device to “sniff out” the odor on the skin.

According to New Atlas, this odor can’t be detected by human noses, and although it can be analyzed using gas chromatography or mass spectrometry, the long process requires expensive equipment located at specialized facilities.

With the portable e-nose, which unfortunately does not resemble a person’s nose, the gas chromatography technology is merged with a surface acoustic wave sensor that measures concentrations of specific gases according to how they interact with a sound wave.

Using machine-learning algorithms, the scientists fed the device samples swabbed from the upper backs of 31 Parkinson’s patients and 32 healthy volunteers, as per the ACS.

It was able to identify three different compounds—octanal, hexyl acetate, and perillic aldehyde—which showed a significant difference in concentration between the two groups.

Following that, the e-nose looked into 24 additional samples, half from Parkinson’s patients and the other half from a control group.

It resulted in a 70.8% accuracy in correctly detecting which individuals had the disease, with the figure rising to 79.2% when each participant’s full body-odor profile was used.

It’s believed that once the technology has been further developed and tested more widely, it’ll become increasingly accurate.

[via New Atlas and ACS, cover image via Katarzyna Bialasiewicz | Dreamstime.com]