Welcome to BrainStuff.
You stink.
I mean, so do I. Don't be offended - everybody smells.
That's just a fact of life.
And today's question is: can a disease change the way you smell?
The answer is yes.
Not only can a disease change the way you smell, but different diseases can cause different
smells.
And when we say diseases, we're not just talking about physical ailments.
It is also possible to detect a mental illness through smell.
And this is not really deserving of a spoiler alert, because our species has known about
it for thousands of years.
Even Hippocrates (apparently) used smell as a diagnostic tool when he would sniff the
breath and urine of people to see if there was some sort of ailment going on in their
body.
So let's talk about how diseases change the way a person smells.
The smell from a disease will emanate from your breath, your blood, your urine, your
sweat.
And there's a culprit at play here: a chemical.
The chemical's known as Volatile Organic Compounds - or VOCs for those in the know - influence
the way these smells emanate.
A diseased cell metabolizes in a different way than a healthy one.
And this is what makes something rotten in the state of Denmark, if, you know, Denmark
is your body.
Experts believe that this smelling disease capability is an evolutionary adaptation.
That we, the human species, have evolved to sense an ailment from another member of our
species, and that it gives us a heads up so that we can stay away from them and prevent
the spread of disease.
This may also be why certain scents are just so repellent and repugnant and disgusting
to people, because on some level we associate them with disease.
Now here's the billion dollar - or billion plague?
- question, I guess: What do diseases smell like?
And that means it's time for our handy list o'plague smells.
So next question: Who can actually smell this stuff?
Can people smell it?
A lady in Scotland lost her husband to Parkinson's disease.
And over the progression of his condition, she noticed that his scent was changing.
It was becoming increasingly musky.
Scientists at Edinburgh University decided to put this to the test.
They asked her to identify Parkinson's based on smell alone.
They were astounded, when, out of the 12 people she identified with Parkinson's, she got 11
correct.
That's an incredibly high success rate.
And they went from astounded to astonished when #12 began exhibiting Parkinson's symptoms
eight months later.
That's a 100% success rate.
But of course humans aren't the only players in the game of smelling disease.
Dogs are actually way better at it.
Because, you know, your pooches treat scents the way that we humans treat sight.
Scent is their primary source of encountering the world.
And what we have found is that dogs do have an ability to smell certain odors and associate
them with certain ailments.
Certain service dogs have been trained to detect blood sugar fluctuations in their owners,
and then alert them before a seizure or some adverse medical condition occurs.
An even more fascinating fact here is that dogs are especially good sensing prostate
cancer.
At the High Wycombe Hospital, several studies conducted indicated that dogs did have this
ability.
And when they focused on prostate cancer, they found something amazing.
Out of 900 samples, the dogs identified the condition correctly 98% of the time.
And, furthermore, the control group included people who had cancer, but not prostate cancer.
And these dogs were able to tell the difference.
And this brings us to the forefront of modern research.
Is it possible for humanity to build some sort of machine that can mimic these same
processes that we see happening in a dog's extraordinary olfactory sense?
And the answer is: we're on the way.
Consider: there's a small pocket radio sized device called Cyranose.
Get it?
Like Cyrano de Bergerac?
There's a movie?
This pocket radio sized device is able to take in gas and analyze it, searching for
certain VOCs, and from there, diagnosing a condition.
Right now its range is pretty limited.
It can sense pneumonia or sinusitis, and other similar related things.
But we're hoping that this kind of device will expand, both in the number of VOCs that
it is able to sense, its sophistication when it comes to diagnosing, and, as a consequence,
its ability to save lives.
So that's where we're at now.
I don't want to webMD you guys, or scare anybody with disease, but if you want to rewind and
check the smells for each disease, feel free.
And of course, as always, if you think that there's something smelling rotten, then do
check with a medical professional.
In the meantime, have you ever smelled a disease before?
Do you think you're capable of doing it?
If so, what, and how did it smell?
Let me know in the comments, and as always, stay tuned for more BrainStuff.