The electronic nose that can sniff out if you have a cold

AN ELECTRONIC nose that can tell if you have a cold or flu could soon be used in GP surgeries.

The inventors say the device has an 80 per cent success rate. It sniffs out bacteria – meaning it can tell when antibiotics are needed as a treatment.

Bacterial infections respond to antibiotics, but viral ones do not. Using the nose, GPs can tell patients attending surgeries if they have a cold or flu – or a bacterial infection.

The device analyses a breath sample after patients have blown into a tube – similar to a police breathalyser.

Chemicals are then identified, signalling what bacteria is present. Warwick University’s Professor James Covington, who developed the nose, said he hopes it will help reduce antibiotic prescriptions.

He stressed: ‘I want to try to make the drugs we have last longer. Our idea is that we are going to get breath and we are going to sniff it. Smelling breath gives access to the body’s biological process.’

He told the British Science Festival in Warwickshire that preliminary trials involving more than 1,000 people suggest it is accurate in four out of five cases.

Professor Covington said the nose could identify ‘80 per cent of patients who did not have bacterial infections. This could be a cold or a flu – that is pretty good for a general screening situation.

‘You could also say that we could accurately state that eight out of ten patients had the flu or common cold.’

It is claimed unnecessary prescriptions are fuelling resistance to antibiotics.