# Disease diagnosis from the smell of your sweat **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 2, 2003, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960 "2003-04-02T14:42:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myron_Van_Horowitzski)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/1 "2003-04-02T14:42:55Z")
Does anybody have a reference for this? I searched Google but couldn’t find anything specific. For example: if your sweat was to smell of say, chlorine, what might this indicate? ---
**Author:** ![zia\_nova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bc79bd/32.png) [@zia\_nova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zia_nova)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/2 "2003-04-02T15:22:18Z")
:dubious: hmmm. I’m guessing that’s not a totally accurate method, but sonds interesting ---
**Author:** ![zia\_nova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/bc79bd/32.png) [@zia\_nova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zia_nova)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/3 "2003-04-02T15:24:10Z")
and it sounds interesting too ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/4 "2003-04-02T15:29:11Z")
In theory, this practice might work, but I’d say that in practice it deserves to be on Quackwatch. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/5 "2003-04-02T15:41:18Z")
[Diagnosing Illness from Perspiration Odor](http://www.school-for-champions.com/health/docsmell.htm) ---
**Author:** ![LordVor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90ced4/32.png) [@LordVor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LordVor)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/6 "2003-04-02T15:53:03Z")
There’s also a group of people hoping to get funding for a study on whether or not dogs can be trained to “smell” cancerous cells, presumably as a pre-screening method. [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2006037.stm) -lv ---
**Author:** ![remf3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@remf3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remf3)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2003, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/7 "2003-04-02T16:20:10Z")
First, I want to quantify this reply: I am a nurse, I’ve worked in Intensive Care and Emergency Room. Most of this is anecdotal at best. I have gotten to the point where I can (sometimes) predict what bacteria may be infecting a person based on smell. They all have very distinct smells. Psuedomonas and Staph Aureus are the 2 that you will never forget…esp in open wounds. Also necrotizing facisitis (aka flesh eating bacteria) have a very distinctive smell to them. Certain cancers smell different; every thing from sweet to sour. And sometimes, on some people, you can even smell their death coming (although you can probably chalk that up to nursing premonition/superstition). While a lot of these smells are distinctive and usually fairly accurate, we still base everything on cultures, be it blood, wound or sputum. I don’t think that smell has become a lost art…in some patients its hard to ignore, I just think that diagnostics have reached a point where smell just becomes the reason to run a certain test. Also, from a litigation stand point, it’s hard to stand in court and say “They smelled like they had a staph pneumonia” without some actual empirical data. ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2003, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disease-diagnosis-from-the-smell-of-your-sweat/165960/8 "2003-04-03T10:50:47Z")
Schizophrenic people are well known to have a “goaty” aroma. It is also common knowledge that advanced tubercular patients have a “baked bread” smell.