title: A sorbent tube for oral malodour monitoring.
abstract: Volatile sulphur compounds (VSCs) and particularly hydrogen sulphide are considered as the predominant gases causing oral malodour. In this paper, a simple alarm sensor has been developed for VSCs determination in mouth air. The device consists of a glass tube packed with a solid sensing phase. The VSCs react with the sensing phase to produce a change in the colour of the sensor visible with a naked eye. Different "reagents" were investigated to develop the sensing phase (neocuproine + Cu(II), bathocuproine + Cu(II), resazurin, 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol and lead acetate), finding the neocuproine + Cu(II) as the best for our purposes. Also, different substrates such as Amberlite XAD-4 and XAD-7 and different trademarks of silica gel were tested as solid supports, being selected the silica gel. A device consisting of a glass tube packed with the sensing phase was optimized and tested with halitosis patients as a rapid illness test and the results compared with those obtained with a commercially available instrument, the Halimetertrade mark, used for the determination of VSCs in mouth air. The results exhibited acceptable agreement between the proposed "qualitative" alarm sensor and a commercially available technique selected as reference, showing the possibility of using this "visual sensor" to control the halitosis and its evolution with an eventual treatment, by the own patient.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical and Analytical Chemistry, University of Oviedo, Julián Claveria 8, 33006 Oviedo, Spain.
authors.forename: Julio
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rodríguez-Fernández
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: López-Fernández
authors.forename: Rosario
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pereiro
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Menéndez
authors.forename: José María
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Tejerina
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sicilia
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sanz-Medel