Smelling heart failure from human skin odor with an electronic nose

The human body odor contains different volatile organic compounds which can be used as biomarkers for various diseases. The early detection of heart failure (HF) through periodical screening provides an early treatment application. Therefore we have developed a completely new non-invasive method to identify HF applying an “electronic nose” (e-nose) which provides a “smelling” of the disease based on the analysis of sweat volatile gases from the skin surface. For this e-nose a special applicator carrying the sensor chip was developed which can be applied directly on the skin surface. 27 patients with decompensated HF (DHF), 25 patients with compensated HF (CHF, mean age 70.72 ± 12.02) and 28 controls (CON) were enrolled in this first pilot study. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed in combination with discriminant function analysis (DA) to discriminate between the patient groups. DHF were separated from CHF with an accuracy of 87% whereas the CON were successfully discriminated from CHF in 85%. The results of this pilot study suggest that an e-nose could be successfully applied for diagnosing and monitoring of HF patients analyzing the human body odor from skin surface.