The air we exhale contains information that can assist with the diagnosis of disease. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Project Hub for Microelectronic and Optical Systems for Biomedicine MEOS are now developing solutions designed to enable the analysis of breath gas for this purpose. Although their research focuses on the early detection of cancer, the same principle could also be applied to distinguish between COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases.
Some diseases have a distinct odor. A faintly sweet and fruity acetone smell, for example, can indicate diabetes. Indeed, there are reports of physicians in Ancient Greece who were able to detect disease by the smell of a patient’s breath.
