Application of an Electronic Nose to Diagnose Liver Cirrhosis from the Skin Surface

Abstract

The human body odor contains of different volatile organic compounds. In patients with liver cirrhosis and patients who are addicted to alcohol the compound of sweat and volatile gases are changed because of the liver dysfunction and remaining alcoholics and alcoholic decomposition products within the blood. This leads to changes of the metabolic balance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to apply an electronic nose for detecting such metabolic changes at the skin surface. A special applicator was developed to collect and analyze the transpired dermal gases directly on the skin surface. The measured values were analyzed by principal component analysis and quadratic discriminant function analysis. We could show in a pilot study on 25 patients that an electronic nose is able to detect changes in the human body odor and to discriminate between healthy subjects (controls), patients with liver cirrhosis and primed alcoholic addicted patients.