Arif Atique Physician Researcher

VOC – Ever heard of it? No? Well, you’re about to hear a lot more about it.

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. Sounds fancy, right? Let me break it down for you.

Remember chemistry class? Let’s start there – with elements. Earth has 118 known elements: oxygen, carbon, gold, silver – you name it. These are the building blocks of everything. Pure substances, one type of atom each, and stubbornly refusing to break down unless you bring out the big guns – nuclear reactions. Each element has its own personality (we call them physical and chemical properties) and its own number on the periodic table.

Now, when two or more of these elements get together and bond chemically, boom – you’ve got yourself a compound. Water? That’s H₂O – hydrogen and oxygen holding hands.

Compounds can be classified in many ways, but here’s what matters for our story: do they contain carbon and hydrogen, or don’t they? If they do, we call them organic compounds. If they don’t, they’re inorganic.

But wait, there’s more! Organic compounds have their own categories based on how quickly they evaporate. The fast ones? Those are our stars today – Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Then there are the slowpokes – semi-volatile and non-volatile organic compounds.

Ever noticed that sharp smell when you’re filling up your car? Or the distinctive whiff of nail polish remover? That’s VOCs in action, evaporating right at room temperature.

Here’s where it gets interesting: your body is a VOC factory. We’re producing and releasing hundreds of different VOCs every single day. How? Through metabolism – breaking down proteins, fats, and carbs – and through our microbiome, the bacteria living on our skin and in our gut.

And here’s the kicker: when you’re sick, your VOC profile changes. Different diseases leave different chemical fingerprints. So, checking these profiles? That’s diagnosis. Monitoring them? That’s seeing if treatment is working.

Can we smell these VOCs ourselves? Sure, we can– but we’re amateurs compared to forensic dogs. While we humans muddle along with our measly 5-6 million scent receptors, these four-legged detectives are blessed with 300 million. They can detect VOCs at concentrations as low as parts per trillion. Mind-blowing, isn’t it?

And guess what creates your body odor? VOCs. Your breath smell? VOCs again. We’re literally walking, talking VOC emitters.

You’ve probably seen this technology in action without realizing it. That handheld breathalyzer police use to check if drivers have been drinking? Yep, that’s a VOC detection machine catching ethanol vapor.

Is this being used in medicine right now? Absolutely. Doctors have been doing this for ages – remember the old-school practice of smelling a patient’s breath? That fruity acetone smell? It’s a red flag for diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious diabetes complication.

Take the urea breath test for H. pylori infection – the nasty bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. Technically, it’s a VOC test. The patient drinks labeled urea, H. pylori’s urease enzyme breaks it down into CO₂ (yes, a volatile organic compound), which gets absorbed into the bloodstream and exhaled. Catch that CO₂, and you’ve caught your culprit.

Then there’s the hydrogen breath test for lactose intolerance and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (when your small bowel has too many uninvited bacterial guests). Or the FeNO test that measures nitric oxide in asthmatics’ breath.

Here’s what makes this exciting: these tests are quick, painless, and easy. No needles, no complicated procedures. Just breathe. This simplicity has lit a fire under researchers worldwide.

The future? It’s breathtaking (pun intended). Scientists are hunting for VOC signatures in everything – cancers, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis. Imagine detecting cancer from a simple breath test. Imagine monitoring your chronic condition without a single blood draw.

This isn’t science fiction anymore – it’s the pressing need of our time. People deserve easy, quick, and accurate diagnoses. Early detection saves lives. And if we can do it by simply asking someone to breathe into a device? That’s not just medicine – that’s revolution.

The age of VOC diagnostics is here. And trust me, you’ll be hearing a lot more about it.

Arif Atique

28/01/2026