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green light means you pass (and your bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it’s just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently

red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor’s office to check if something more serious is an issue.

sensor chip that

It's coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath

nanowires enable the sensor to detect just a few molecules of the disease marker gas in a 'sea' of billions of molecules of other compounds that the breath consists of

can't buy this in the stores just yet

individual tests such as an acetone-detecting breathalyzer for monitoring diabetes and an ammonia-detecting breathalyzer to determine when to end a home-based hemodialysis treatment--are still being evaluated clinically

researchers envision developing the technology such that a number of these tests can be performed with a single device

you might be able to self-detect a whole range of diseases and disorders, including lung cancer, by just exhaling into a handheld breathalyzer.

nanowires can be rigged to detect infectious viruses and microbes like Salmonella, E. coli or even anthrax

conducted the studies in lab mice that were infected with different types of common bacteria

two different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause pneumonia, and one strain of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause respiratory infections

The next day, the researchers tested the animals’ breath by ionizing breath samples then shooting them through a mass spectrometer to analyze concentrations of various VOCs in a process called secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

The test detected the different bacterial infections as well as differentiated between healthy and infected

also located the difference between the two strains of P. aeruginosa

technique will have to be tested in large human trials before it makes an appearance in the clinic

the rapidity of the test is appealing. And it could at least make it a good first step in detecting bacterial infections, with a follow-up culture coming later if deemed necessary—to detect drug-resistant TB, for example

suspect that we will also be able to distinguish between bacterial, viral and fungal infections of the lung

Similar breath tests have also been studied for detecting other ailments, such as diabetes and cancer