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Did you think that only a doctor could get a trace of Cancer? Think again. Professor H Haick, along with his group at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology,Haifa brings another complimentary innovation of medical science: the Nanoscale Artificial Nose.
The NA-Nose is an electronic nose, and as the name suggests, it smells exhaled breath to conveniently make a distinction between head, neck and lung cancer. The need for such a tool was much called for because not only is head and neck cancer detected late but also carries the hazard of spreading to a patient’s aero-digestive tract.
The 8th most prevalent cancer on the globe, the head and neck cancer affects body parts such as the lip, the orifice, nasal cavity, sinuses, salivary glands, pharynx and larynx.
The group conducted the study effectively by testing more than 80 samples which included 80 patients who were victims of head, neck and lung cancer using cross-sectional clinical testing. This dynamic sample group gave them useful results as the NA-Nose could clearly distinguish between chemical compositions between 62 samples. It also helped define variation between head, neck and lung patients and healthy controls and between the three kinds of cancers itself.
Sustaining the artificial nose results was an investigation of 40 breath samples that involved using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. This analysis also showed a great distinction between the compositions of exhaled breath by the three cancer sets.
As explained by Technion, the NA-nose involves the use of five gold nanoparticle sensors and computer algorithms to identify the mold of unstable organic compounds in the breaths exhaled. The electrical properties of these, thinner than a strand of human hair, nanoparticle sensors, owing to their size, can be changed easily by a few molecules.
To find particular organic compounds, the NA nose which is founded on gold and platinum is "functionalized" with organic lizands. These sensors are a 1,000 times more susceptible, react more rapidly than any current sensor and review tiny concentration of compounds which is essential as 80% exhaled breath is water vapor.
Haick added that they required taking these results to a bigger scale to investigate the probability of developing NA-NOSE as a diagnostic and screening tool, as reported by the BBC.
As we wait for this path breaking study to make it available to the public, it already promises us a useful start in the field of breath testing for head, neck and cancer.
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