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British researchers have developed a device that can read odors in urine to help diagnose patients with early signs of bladder cancer, according to a paper published Monday in the U.S. journal Plos One.
There are currently no reliable biomarkers to screen patients for bladder cancer in the same way that there are for breast and cervical cancers. Previous research has suggested that a particular odor in the urine could be detected by dogs trained to recognize the scent, indicating that methods of diagnoses could be based on the smell of certain gases.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool and University of the West of England said they have now built a device that contains a sensor which responds to chemicals in gas emitted from urine.
It takes about 30 minutes for the device, known as Odorreader, to analyze the gas and produce a "profile" of the chemicals in urine that can be read by doctors to diagnose the presence of cancer cells in the bladder, they said.
The researchers tested it on 24 patient samples known to have cancer and 74 samples that have urological symptoms, but no cancer. They claimed that the device correctly assigned 100 percent of cancer patients.
"It is thought that dogs can smell cancer, but this is obviously not a practical way for hospitals to diagnose the disease," Professor Norman Ratcliffe from the University of the West of England said in a statement.
"Taking this principle, however, we have developed a device that can give us a profile of the odor in urine. It reads the gases that chemicals in the urine can give off when the sample is heated," Ratcliffe said.
The researchers described these results as being "very encouraging" for the development of new diagnostic tools for bladder cancer, but they also noted that larger samples of patients are needed to test the device further before it can be used in hospitals.
