Analysis of human male armpit sweat after fenugreek ingestion: Instrumental and sensory optimisation of the extraction method

In this study, we intend to develop a simple and selective procedure to extract compounds involved in the strong odour which appears after fenugreek ingestion (this odour is responsible of the so-called pseudo-maple syrup urine disease). Two procedures, solvent extraction and headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), were employed to extract compounds from armpits sweat samples collected from two volunteer subjects. The HS-SPME extraction parameters were first optimised and then applied to extracts of armpit sweat collected from subjects after fenugreek ingestion. The sensory evaluation of the different extracts was carried by eight trained assessors; the HS-SPME and solvent extracts were, respectively, smelled by direct gas chromatography–olfactometry and direct olfaction. The results of sensory evaluation indicate that HS-SPME with a divinylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane (DVB/CAR/PDMS) fibre, of 50/30 μm film thickness and 2 cm length, gives a global odour close to that of sweat after ingestion of fenugreek infusion.