Dr Mark Pharaoh said that comprehending the exact nature of such gases is necessary for diagnosing problems to do with the balance and mix of bacteria which generates them.
His comments follow the announcement that researchers at the University of Warwick -[change to short hyphen] which was recently named the best university in Midlands by Times Higher Education - are using gas sensors typically used to test premium car components to investigate volatile organic compounds from the human colon.
Dr Ramesh P Arasaradnam, who is also involved in the study, stated: "This technique could give medical consultants such as myself valuable information about what is causing a patient's condition long before the data from a standard bacterial culture would be available."
He added that the sensors could be a crucial new tool for the analysis of gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases.
