UK SCIENTISTS HAVE found a way to diagnose different types of bowel disease by smelling patients’ stools.
The results were 76 per cent accurate in a study of 182 stool samples from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
The test, published in the Journal of Breath Research, recognises different bowel diseases by analysing the chemical compounds emitted from the stools.
Norman Ratcliffe is a professor in the University of the West of England where the study was carried out.
He said their specially-designed ‘odour reader’ would get even more accurate results with more samples to test. He told the BBC that,
The method could be particularly useful for diagnosing a group of diseases that are hard to distinguish.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have very similar symptoms but are very different conditions.
“IBD is an autoimmune disease caused by a response of the immune system to microbes in the gut, which is usually diagnosed by colonoscopy, while IBS is a disorder of the digestive tract with no known cause.”
The study had a 79 per cent accuracy distinguishing IBD patients from healthy patients.
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