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What if detecting cancer was as easy as breathing in and out? According to the results of a recent study, it is.

An international team of 56 researchers in five countries has confirmed that different diseases are characterized by different “chemical signatures” identifiable in breath samples.

The findings by the team led by Israel’s Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology were published recently in ACS Nano.

SEE ALSO: Revolutionary Device Detects Deadly Diseases, Cancer, On The Breath

Although diagnostic techniques based on breath samples have been demonstrated in the past, until now there has not been scientific proof that different and unrelated diseases are characterized by distinct chemical breath signatures. Also, technologies developed to date for this type of diagnosis have been limited to detecting a small number of diseases.

17 diseases, 13 shared chemical components

The study of more than 1,400 patients included 17 different and unrelated diseases: lung cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, stomach cancer, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson’s disease (two types), multiple sclerosis, pulmonary hypertension, preeclampsia and chronic kidney disease. Samples were collected between January 2011 and June 2014 from 14 departments at nine medical centers in five countries: Israel, France, the USA, Latvia and China.

The researchers tested the chemical composition of the breath samples using an accepted analytical method (mass spectrometry). They discovered that all 17 of the diseases contained the same 13 chemical components, albeit in different compositions.