Study links olfactory profile, malaria detectability

Researchers maintain there is a link between a person’s olfactory makeup and the ability to detect if they have contracted malaria.

The work of ETH Zurich investigators published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailed the process of examining volatile chemicals released from the skin of Kenyan children and identified characteristic patterns for both acute and asymptomatic malaria infections.

Scientists collected samples of substances released from the skin of more than 400 Kenyan school children, placing a child’s foot or arm into sealed Teflon bag and passing an air current over the skin for about one hour.

The air was then channeled through special filters collecting the volatile compounds, as investigators used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine the identity and quantity of each compound to generate odor profiles for infected and healthy children.

Scientists were able to identify volatile biomarkers, enabling researchers to determine whether the malaria parasite had infected a child. The odor profiles were found to be significantly different in the case of acute and asymptomatic infection, as researchers were able to detect the pathogen even when it was only present in minute quantities and was not yet observable under the microscope.

“This high detection rate was encouraging,” Consuelo De Moraes, a professor of Biocommunication & Entomology at ETH Zurich, said. “Initially we weren’t sure which chemical compounds we should be looking for. The specific signature is not created by the presence or absence of specific compounds but through a change in the concentrations of compounds that are also present in healthy people. Our task was to filter out the right signals from the extensive background noise.”