Changes validate breath signatures of acute respiratory exacerbations (Michael Wilde, MDCW 2024)

🎤 Presenter: Michael Wilde¹, Rebecca Cordell², Matthew Richardson², Wadah Ibrahim², Paul Monks², Chris Brightling², Erol Gaillard², Neil Greening², Salman Siddiqui³, on behalf of the EMBER consortium² (¹University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom. ²University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom. ³Imperial College, London, United Kingdom)

💡 Book in your calendar: 16th Multidimensional Chromatography Workshop (MDCW) 3 - 5. February 2025

Abstract

The measurement of exhaled, low-molecular weight metabolites in breath offers new opportunities for the discovery of non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of acute cardiorespiratory disease.

Analysis by multidimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC×GC-MS), coupled with rigorous clinical phenotyping, revealed signatures of exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with high diagnostic accuracy (79% sensitivity, 85% specificity). The increased confidence in chemical assignment of VOCs afforded by GC´GC-MS resulted in the discovery of breath metabolite networks associated with clinical subtypes of cardiorespiratory exacerbation.

Breath samples were then collected from the same cohort of patients 6 months post recovery to evaluate longitudinal changes in the exhaled chemical signatures. The temporal trends of significantly enriched metabolite sets with high chemical similarity were consistent exhaled VOCs being associated with acute exacerbation.