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Its developers call it the electronic nose, and it's designed to detect tuberculosis on the breath.TB infects nearly nine million people a year, but the electronic nose can identify the disease in its earliest stages via a computer that sees minute bio-markers exhaled along with carbon dioxide from the lungs. According to lead researcher Virander Singh Chauhan, the electronic nose could radically improve the speed and lower the cost of diagnosing the contagious disease. Director of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Bio-technology, Virander Singh Chauhan: " TB detection has been a major issue. All existing methods, none of them do a good job, they are slow and they take a long time. So, we decided to think of something totally out of the box, very new." Traditional diagnostic techniques require blood or sputum samples. The electronic nose employs technology similar to that used by police testing for alcohol, making diagnosis faster and more efficient. Scientists are encouraged by the early results. Virander Singh Chauhan: "What we have so far, we seem to have data to show that it is possible to differentiate between healthy inidividuals from turberculosis individual and also from some other lung conditions. " Health organizations say early detection is essential in treating TB, which kills a million and a half people a year, mostly in developing nations. The project has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from Grant Challenges Canada to further study the technology, which may have uses in detecting other diseases. Virander Singh Chauhan: "Now the technology is so good that you can really ask- you can ask this for cancer, you can ask this for bowel disease, you can ask this for kidney disease, especially in urine." More research needs to be done, but it's possible that soon a few quick breaths could mean the difference between life and death for people who have TB. (Andrew Schmertz/Reuters) ◆ 追蹤更多華視影音及圖文新聞：
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