Comparison of human axillary odour profiles obtained by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and skin microbial profiles obtained by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis using multivariate pattern recognition

• DOI: 10.1007/s11306-007-0054-6
• Publication Date: 2007-06-20T18:09:46Z
• Authors: Yun Xu; Sarah J. Dixon; Richard G. Brereton; Helena A. Soini; Milos V. Novotny; Karlheinz Trebesius; Ingrid Bergmaier; Elisabeth Oberzau...; Karl Grammer; Dustin J. Penn
• Keywords: 570; 615; 1060 Biologie; 1060 Biology; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

Several studies have shown that microbial action is responsible for many compounds responsible for human odour. In this paper, we compare the pattern of microbial profiles and that of chemical profiles of human axillary odour by using multivariate pattern matching techniques. Approximately 200 subjects from Carinthia, Austria, participated in the study. The microbial profiles were represented by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis and the axillary odour profiles were determined in the sweat samples collected by a stir-bar sampling device and analysed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Both qualitative and quantitative distance metrics were used to construct dissimilarity matrices between samples which were then used to represent the patterns of these two types of profiles. The distance matrices were then compared by using the Mantel test and the Procrustean test. The results show that on the overall dataset there is no strong correlation between microbial and chemical profiles. When the data are split into family groups, correlations vary according to family with a range of estimated p values from 0.00 to 0.90 that the null hypothesis (no correlation) holds. When 32 subjects who followed four basic rules of behaviour were selected, the estimated p-values are 0.00 using qualitative and