Sniffing Out Disease

In just a few years, we could all be carrying a device in our pocket that detects the aroma of diseases like malaria or cancer before we even realise we’re ill.

- Rosie Mallett

Picture a world where you no longer have to run a gauntlet of tedious, invasive tests when you suspect that something is amiss with your health. Instead, your smartphone or wearable device tells you that there’s something wrong before you have any symptoms, and suggests that a trip to the GP might be in order, gaining you precious time to beat the illness. One day, perhaps you could be warned by a sensor that’s implanted inside your body to keep tabs on your health.

Such a world may not be that far into the future. Most of the technology already exists, and it has been right under our noses all along. It relies on a resource that has been with us since the dawn of humanity: the power of smell. Scientists believe that tapping into this hidden world of odours could pave the way to a major shake-up in our approach to healthcare.

MAKING SCENTS

We constantly emit an aura of hundreds of volatile chemicals from our skin, our breath, and potentially even our gut microbes. Every smell is made up of a complex cocktail of compounds – like a recipe with multiple ingredients. Generally, these scents are too faint for us to detect, but to animals we’re clouds of smells on legs, and they can detect when our odour is different from usual. This is vital, because scientists suspect that when we’re unwell, our unique aroma changes; each diseases could even have its own signature pong.

“If we can figure out these chemical signatures and mimic the animals’ smell-power, then we can use them to achieve earlier diagnosis and perhaps save lives,” says Prof James Logan, head of disease control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And that’s exactly what he and his colleagues have been doing for one killer disease: malaria.

GETTING BUGGED