MeBO Research looking to offer TMAU urine testing directly in Europe

MeBO Research is always looking to make trimethylaminuria (TMAU) testing more easily accessible and affordable to the body odor and halitosis community, as well as in the future offering other 'systemic body odor' tests. Currently we are working with a UK clinical testing lab that has access to a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectrometer that will hopefully lead to direct TMAU testing through this method.

NMR Spectroscopy testing : NMR is testing a medium for the compounds in it via Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. An example graph is shown here. The TMA and TMAO peaks have been labelled. By comparing the TMAO peak to the TMA peak, the ratio between the 2 can then be calculated and the TMAO % worked out.. in this case the TMAO : TMA ratio is 1 : 0.422 (which is not very good, at around 70% TMAO)

MeBO Research also wish the quantities of TMA and TMAO to be given too. A few labs who do not regard anything other than the ratio to diagnose TMAU would not need to quantify the quantities. The reason MeBO want the quantities known is because, for example, 5% of 200 is a lot more than 5% of 2. This usually is important for diagnosing secondary TMAU due to bacterial overgrowth.

It can be seen that the NMR result also contains many other peaks, from which the responsible compounds should be able to be worked out. The very large peak is creatinine. For now, we will start with TMAU. In the future we should be able to look for other abnormal results for 'malodorous' compounds in results. One main reason for not doing this for now is that we need to first know what normal results look like. Also it will probably take the labs some convincing that it is worth testing for other compounds. Someday we hope to make available a 'broad spectrum systemic body odor test' which will probably be based on testing a wide range of malodourous volatile organic compounds in human secretions, as well as other aspects such as DNA testing and gut dysbiosis testing.

We will let you know when this TMAU test becomes available directly in Europe. We are hoping it will be below £150 in price.