Scientists have used skin patches to investigate the biochemical profile of a person's body odour.

Information contained in skin odour may be used to diagnose, manage and assess diseases such as cancer, according to a team of scientists headed by Paul Thomas at Loughborough University, UK.

The team collected chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from patients' skin using a patch made from a siloxane polymer. The group recovered the compounds adsorbed on the patch using thermal desorption, which uses heat to turn the VOCs into gases, and detected them using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

VOCs, the type of compound most likely to have an odour, are a beautiful area to research says co-worker Svetlana Riazanskaia from the University of Manchester, UK.

'Identifying specific VOCs could open a new non-invasive window into metabolic profiling of skin and illustrate how these profiles are altered in disease. At present, the standard diagnostic tool for skin cancer is tissue biopsy, which is highly invasive, time-consuming and, most importantly, may be needless,' she says.

According to Ian Wilson, an expert in pharmaceutical analysis at AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, UK, VOCs can provide a great deal of important biochemical information about an individual's health. 'This is a very interesting innovation in the analysis of skin volatiles and may provide useful insights into a whole range of conditions,' he says.

'It has definite potential in both hospitals and doctor's offices,' comments Riazanskaia. 'It provides an opportunity for much earlier, easier and stress-free detection of biomarkers for human disorders. It also could be used in patients from whom it is difficult to collect blood, such as haemophiliacs or babies. This is too attractive to ignore.'

Sarah Corcoran