Olfactics and Diagnostics

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On the sense of smell, olfactory properties and uses in medical diagnostics

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  • January 10, 2012
  • 10:00 AM
  • 183 views

Studying body odor: one step at a time

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Unpleasant body odors could be a sign of a disease. But even when the cause of the disease is known - an example is trimethylaminuria or TMAU - there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Elimination of choline and other essential nutrients from diet can be harmful and unhelpful.  Everyone has their own unique needs, with individual combinations of foods, activities and optimal environmental conditions.An earlier survey of about 100 body odor and halitosis sufferers indicated stress (34%), fo........ Read more »

Jan Havlicek, & Pavlina Lenochova. (2008) Environmental effects on human body odour. Chemical Signals in Vertebrates. DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-73945-8_19  

  • December 24, 2011
  • 11:25 PM
  • 162 views

The smell of Christmas

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

How does Christmas smell like? Like cinnamon! So say studies by European scientists. And even though the smell of cinnamon is described as "pungent" (besides "warm", 'sweet", and "spicy"), it fires up our brains, evoking a joyful Christmas mood and making us more generous. Cinnamon is classified as a stimulant. Smelling and tasting cinnamon could enhance attention and virtual recognition memory, at least in comparison to smells of peppermint, jasmine or cherries. In addition to its many heal........ Read more »

  • December 6, 2011
  • 12:00 AM
  • 169 views

The Road to Ammonia

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Why do I smell like Ammonia? This question, in thousands of variations, has been asked over and over again at every major question/answer site, especially teen, bodybuilding and athletic forums.The Internet provides plenty of opinions.Medical sites talk about diseases like chronic kidney failure, hepatic cirrhosis or H. pylori infection. Fitness sites recommend drinking more water, reevaluating protein sources and eating more carbohydrates. What are these diet-odor links? And what's the Science?........ Read more »

  • November 5, 2011
  • 05:00 PM
  • 219 views

What's that fatty odor?

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Body odor is closely associated with diet. Deciphering the chemistry of human odor is not an easy task. Fortunately for some (and not so fortunately for others), the human nose can capture and discriminate many smell signatures. Could this discrimination be used to connect the dots between diet and body odor? MEBO Research has just started an anonymous study using the Aurametrix health analysis tool to find out.... Read more »

Dunkel M, Schmidt U, Struck S, Berger L, Gruening B, Hossbach J, Jaeger IS, Effmert U, Piechulla B, Eriksson R.... (2009) SuperScent--a database of flavors and scents. Nucleic acids research, 37(Database issue). PMID: 18931377  

  • February 2, 2011
  • 11:36 PM
  • 360 views

Colonoscopy for everyone! ..or Gonna Buy Me A Dog

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

New research from Japan brings good news: dogs can be almost as accurate as a colonoscopy exam.In patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) and controls, the sensitivity of canine scent detection of breath samples compared with conventional diagnosis by colonoscopy was 0.91 and the specificity was 0.99. The sensitivity of canine scent detection of watery stool samples was 0.97 and the specificity was 0.99. The ........ Read more »

Sonoda H, Kohnoe S, Yamazato T, Satoh Y, Morizono G, Shikata K, Morita M, Watanabe A, Morita M, Kakeji Y.... (2011) Colorectal cancer screening with odour material by canine scent detection. Gut. PMID: 21282130  

  • August 22, 2010
  • 12:30 AM
  • 433 views

Of blood and breath: metabolite-based diagnosis of ovarian cancer

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Physicians always knew that breath contains clues to diseases. Chemicals in breath often correlate with chemicals in saliva and blood - be it alcohol, anaesthetics or other metabolites (see, for example, this study by Dr Andreas Hengstenberg).As one of my interests is breath-based detection of ovarian cancer, I took note of the recent paper claiming 99% to 100% accuracy of detecting ovarian cancer by metabolites in blood. The authors used customized functional support vector machine-based machin........ Read more »

Zhou M, Guan W, Walker LD, Mezencev R, Benigno BB, Gray A, Fernández FM, & McDonald JF. (2010) Rapid Mass Spectrometric Metabolic Profiling of Blood Sera Detects Ovarian Cancer with High Accuracy. Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers . PMID: 20699376  

  • August 11, 2010
  • 01:51 PM
  • 494 views

On cancers and petroleum spills

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Researchers have known for years that smell of cancer patients is chemically different from healthy individuals. One more study featured in British Journal of Cancer brings us a bit closer to an inexpensive, easy-to-use, portable device for home diagnostics. Exhaled breath collected from 177 volunteers (patients with lung, colon, breast, and prostate cancers and healthy controls) was examined by gold nanoparticle nanosensor arrays (GNPs) and gas chromatography linked to the mass spectr........ Read more »

  • July 28, 2010
  • 08:18 PM
  • 530 views

Hormonal Manipulation of Olfactory Cues, or How to Lose a Guy in 10 days

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Body odors are important cues used for social and sexual discrimination. As was shown many times, animals can easily smell age-, health- and genetics-related  differences.  Recent study of our large-eyed relatives, ring-tailed lemurs, demonstrate that drugs can alter body scents and change behavior. Researchers examined changes in endocrine and  semiochemical profiles of sexually mature female lemurs treated with hormonal contraceptives during their breeding season. Genetic diversity and kin........ Read more »

Jeremy Chase Crawford,Marylène Boulet and Christine M. Drea1. (2010) Smelling wrong: hormonal contraception in lemurs alters critical female odour cues. Proceedings B . info:/

  • July 15, 2010
  • 02:53 PM
  • 439 views

Odor-prints: individual but genetic connections unclear

by Aurametrix team in Olfactics and Diagnostics

Odor is like fingerprints or facial features - it's unique.  Yet no single measurement could be easily applied to recognize an individual. GC/MS measurements can be used to analyze mixtures of acids, alcohols, aldehydes, hydrocarbons, esters, ketones, and nitrogenous molecules in human odor. Complex algorithms mining patterns help to pinpoint the signatures. But could these signatures be easily derived from genetic makeups?Recent article published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology looked at ........ Read more »

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