Washington, July 9 (ANI): A team of researchers from the University of Liverpool and University of the West of England, (UWE Bristol), have built a device that can read odours in urine to help diagnose patients with early signs of bladder cancer.
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 odour in the urine could be detected by dogs trained to recognise the scent, indicating that methods of diagnoses could be based on the smell of certain gases.
The team have now built a device, called ODOREADER that contains a sensor which responds to chemicals in gas emitted from urine.
The device, constructed in the laboratories at UWE Bristol's Institute of Biosensor Technology, analyses this gas and produces a 'profile' of the chemicals in urine that can be read by scientists to diagnose the presence of cancer cells in the bladder.
The device works by inserting a bottle containing the urine sample into the device.
About 30 minutes later the ODOREADER is capable of showing the diagnosis on the computer screen if the sample derives from a patient with bladder cancer. (ANI)