Your Breath Can Reveal … Stomach Cancer?

Scientists have developed a test that can detect stomach cancer with 90% accuracy—based on a patient’s breath, the BBC reports. This test sounds monumentally less unpleasant than the current method for diagnosing stomach cancer, which involves a probe and a camera being passed through the mouth and down the throat in order to do a stomach biopsy. The quick new test simply looks for certain chemical profiles in exhaled breath.

Stomach cancer gives off a signature smell due to certain organic compounds, and the test can detect them—and even differentiate between early- and late-stage cancer. The development could be a big boon for those with the disease, which is typically diagnosed fairly late; in the UK, only 20% of patients survive for more than five years after diagnosis. Scientists are working on diagnosing other types of cancers, like lung cancer, in the same way (dogshave the jump on them); the stomach cancer test will be further researched in a larger study.