A PUFF of exhaled air could give an early warning of lung disease by morphing a liquid into gel.
Tuberculosis, lung cancer and influenza all raise levels of nitric oxide (NO) in the breath. At present, sophisticated machinery is needed to test for NO.
Now , a chemist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her colleagues are developing a cheaper test. They have shown that NO oxidises a solution of the compound dihydropyridine, changing the shape of its molecules so that they stack together to form a solid gel 鈥� a change that can be seen with the naked eye. McNeil will present the result at the meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, this week.
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