Most people as soon as they realize candle in their ear they run to get it out. But the wax in the ear can contain valuable indicators for a person’s health, from Alzheimer’s to cancer. Now scientists They analyze the chemistry of in the hope of finding new ways of diagnosing diseases, according to the BBC.

It’s orange, it’s sticky and it’s probably the last thing you want to talk about. However, ear wax is increasingly attracting the attention of scientists who want to use it for to learn more about diseases and situations such as cancer, heart disease and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.

Its scientific name is a cell and is a mixture of secretions from two types of glands covering the outer acoustic canal, cell glands and sebaceous glands. It is a mixture of hair, dead skin flakes and other physical residues.

The primary purpose of the wax in the ear is under discussion, but its most likely function is to keep the acoustic resource clean and lubricated. It also serves as a trap, preventing bacteria, fungi and other unwanted visitors, such as insects, from entering our heads. So far, scientists have not paid much attention to the importance of the candle, but this is gradually changing thanks to a number of scientific discoveries.

For example, the overwhelming majority of people of European or African descent have a wet wax in the ear, which is yellow or orange and sticks. However, 95% of East Asia people have a dry wax, which is gray and does not stick. The gene responsible for the production of either liquid or dry ear wax is called ABCC11, which also happens to be responsible for whether a person has smelly armpits. About 2% of people – especially those who belong to the dry wax category – have the type of this gene that their armpits do not smell.

However, perhaps the most useful discoveries associated with ear wax relate to what sticky material in our ears for our health can reveal.

Significant indications

In 1971, Nicholas L Petrakis, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, found that Caucasian, African -American and Germans living in the US, who all had “wet ear wax”, were about four times more likely to die.

More recently, in 2010, researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology took blood samples of 270 female patients with invasive breast cancer and 273 women volunteers. They found that Japanese breast cancer were up to 77% more likely to have the gene encoding the wet ear wax compared to healthy volunteers.

However, the finding remains controversial and large -scale studies in Germany, Australia and Italy have found no difference in the risk of breast cancer between people with wet and dry wax, although the number of people in these countries with dry ear wax is very small.

What is more substantiated is the relationship between certain systemic diseases and substances in the wax of the ear. Take for example the disease with urine odor like maple syrup, A rare genetic disorder that prevents the body from breaking down some amino acids found in food. This leads to the accumulation of volatile compounds in the blood and urine, giving the urine the characteristic smell of maple syrup.

“Ear wax literally smells like maple syrup, so within 12 hours of baby birth, when you smell this special and wonderful smell, it tells you that it has this innate error in its metabolism,” says Rabi Ann Musah, a chemist at the state.

COVID-19 It can also sometimes be detected in the wax of the ear and a person’s ear wax can also tell you if it has type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

There is also Ménière’s diseasea disease of the inner ear causing human vertigo and hearing loss. “Symptoms can be very exhaustive,” says Musah. “They include severe nausea and vertigo. It is impossible to drive or go to places without escort. In the end, you suffer from complete hearing loss to the ear infected. “

But what is the wax of the ear that makes it a treasure of health information? The key, as it turns out, lies in the ability of waving secretions to reflect the internal chemical reactions that take place within the body – a person’s metabolism.

“Many diseases in living organisms are metabolic,” says Nelson Roberto Antoniosi Filho, Professor of Chemistry at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil, who mentions diabetes, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. “In these cases, mitochondria – cellular organisms responsible for converting lipids, carbohydrates and proteins into energy – begin to function differently from healthy cells. They begin to produce different chemicals and may even stop producing others. “Antoniosi’s workshop has discovered that the ear wax concentrates this wide variety of substances more than other biological fluids such as blood, urine, sweat and tears.

Difficult diagnoses

With this in mind, Antoniosi Filho and his team developed “Cerumenograam” – a diagnostic tool that claim to accurately predict if a person has certain forms of cancer based on his ear wax.

In a study conducted in 2019, Antoniosi Filho collected wax samples of 52 cancer patients diagnosed with lymphoma, carcinoma or leukemia. The researchers also took candle from 50 healthy people. They then analyzed the samples. They found 27 compounds in the ear wax that served as a kind of “fingerprint” to diagnose cancer. In other words, the team could predict with 100% accuracy if someone had cancer based on the concentrations of these 27 molecules.

The research team also studies whether the metabolic changes caused by the appearance of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson and Alzheimer’s could also be detected by such a device, although this work is in the early stages.

In Brazil, Amaral Carvalho recently adopted “Cerumenogram” as a diagnosis and follow -up technique for cancer treatment, says Antoniosi Filho.

Musah also hopes that her research one day will help people suffering from Ménière’s disease, a condition for which there is no treatment at present.