Xuria, fecal odor and drain pipe smell....more revealed!!!!

Hi all,
Some research into Xuria started in 1973 when I was 12 years old. I
attended a grammar school called Buckhurst Hill School in Essex, UK.
My art teacher used to have a lady assisting his art classes. She
always smelled heavily of roses and talcum powder to me but
apparently this was to hide her fecal and drain pipe smell.

If you have read some of my past postings about my meeting other
odor sufferers in the UK you will have seen that we could not smell
each other. This was indeed true of this art teacher. Although
everybody else could smell her several feet away I couldn't smell
anything, only her rose-smelling talc.

Anyway, my biology teacher had some insight that this breath cum
Body Odor problem was probably an enzyme disorder. He took a blood
sample from me and centrifuged out the red blood cells. The clear
plasma fluid remaining was analysed for enzymes using gel
electrophoresis.

He compared my chromatogram with other students in my class.
Remarkably, he noticed that an enzyme peak was completely missing
from my chromatogram and this exact same enzyme peak was also
missing from this art teacher who had the same odor problem.

So, what was the enzyme? Well, this is the sad part :( Because I
could not smell myself, I didn't fully know about my odor problem so
I didn't realise the significance of what he was talking about!!

All I remember was that it was some horrendously long enzyme name
which was exactly 23 letters long!! Isn't it crazy the stuff kids
remember!!

Why did I remember it was 23 letters long? Well, that's easy. It was
the longest word I had ever come across!!! :)) The second longest
had only 22 letters and was electroencephalography!!!!

Anyway, last year I revisited the school to see if I could find out
what happened to my biology teacher. Apparently, the school was
bought out by a circus and school for foreign languages. The biology
teacher had died and I was left with a blind lead.

I undertook some postgrad research in odor analysis 2 years back and
learned that this enzyme disorder is part of a metabolic pathway (I
don't know which) and there are other enzymes in this pathway which
can also produce odors if they are absent.

I wish I knew more about all this so I could share with all of you
but I don't. However, perhaps for now some of you will feel relieved
that something is known about this condition Xuria.

Xuria is a hereditary enzyme disorder that results in fecal and
drain pipe odors. The patient often also smells very strongly of the
food they have just eaten. The missing enzyme is otherwise present
in the blood but it is my suspicion that it may be in high
concentrations in other tissues, possibly the liver and the
gastrointestinal tract.

Xuria may result in secondary overgrowth of microorganisms in the
gastrointestinal and oropharyngeal tract however this is just my
opinion and I am not sure about this. Extraordinarily, these
organisms were identified by others as being members of the
Enterobacteriacea family. I say extraordinarily because I have not
come across these organisms being present in the respiratory tract
before.

If there is abnormal bacterial overgrowth then I believe this is
because there must be suitable nutrients for these bacteria. These
nutrients are a direct consequence of the enzyme disorder and my
hunch (just a hunch at this stage) is that there is salivary
excretion of these nutrients with a resulting biofilm that envelopes
the oropharyngeal cavity as well as the oesophagus and stomach.

It is known from medical textbooks that breath odors do not arise
from the stomach unless there is burping since the oesophagus is
normally in a collapsed position. I am convinced that stomach odors
can infact enter the breath (mechanism unknown) without burping
since Helicobacter Pylori can be diagnosed by analysing breath
ammonia. These same patients have no refux oesophagitis, thus
indicating good integrity of the valve separating the stomach from
the oesophagus.

Towards the end of this year I hope to start a series of experiments
to investigate what factors affect the concentration of breath/body
odorants in Xuria. I will share this with the Group although I feel
that the results will probably be more relevant to people who have
fecal/drain pipe odors not due too trimethylaminuria.

Watch this space!! :)
Arun
Tweet