Electronic Nose Approach to the Human Skin Odour Analysis

Olfaction played a very important role as a diagnosis tool in medicine, before the advent of the modem investigation equipment, it is still known that many diseases induce strong variation in the odour of the patient On the other side recent studies shown that the transmission of information through chemical messengers seems to be present also in humans. In this paper first results concerning the application of an electronic nose to the human skin odour analysis are discussed. Results are encouraging in terms of sensors sensitivity and selectivity also if the definition of a correlation between electronic nose results and objective classification criteria of individuals are far to be obtained.