Journal of breath research
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We define breathomics as the metabolomics study of exhaled air. It is a strongly emerging metabolomics research field that mainly focuses on health-related volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Since the amount of these compounds varies with health status, breathomics holds great promise to deliver non-invasive diagnostic tools. ⋯ We demonstrate the advantages as well the drawbacks of such techniques. We aim to help the community to understand how to profit from a particular method. In parallel, we hope to make the community aware of the existing data fusion methods, as yet unresearched in breathomics.
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Selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath may be considered biomarkers if they are indicative of distinct diseases or disease states. Given the inherent molecular selectivity of vibrational spectroscopy, infrared sensing technologies appear ideally suitable for the determination of endogenous VOCs in breath. The aim of this study was to determine that mid-infrared (MIR; 3-20 µm) gas phase sensing is capable of determining isoprene in exhaled breath as an exemplary medically relevant VOC by hyphenating novel substrate-integrated hollow waveguides (iHWG) with a likewise miniaturized preconcentration system. ⋯ Finally, a volunteer breath sample was analysed proving comparable values of isoprene in a real-world scenario. Despite its fundamental utility, the proposed methodology contains some limitations in terms of sensitivity and temporal resolution in comparison with the readily available measurement techniques that should be addressed during future optimization of the system. Nonetheless, this study presents the first determination of endogenous VOCs in breath via advanced hollow waveguide MIR sensor technology, clearly demonstrating its potential for the analysis of volatile biomarkers in exhaled breath.