Gut Check: Gas-Sniffing Capsule Charts The Digestive Tract
The electronic pill looks like the biggest multivitamin a human could possibly swallow. Tests have show that the experimental device can measure gases tied to microbes and digestion.
by Angus Chen
Jan 08, 2018
3 minutes
To study the human gut and the microbes that live within it, scientists have a couple of options. They can grab a small piece of tissue from the gastrointestinal tract or collect a sample of fecal matter.
Neither way is ideal, says Jack Gilbert, a microbiologist and director of the Microbiome Center at the University of Chicago. "By studying [the sample], you're changing it, just by observing it, because you have to cut it out and analyze it," he says.
But a third way may become available to both scientists and clinicians. It's an ingestible electronic
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