Dept. of Respiratory Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 22700, NL-1100 DE, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Clin Exp Allergy. 2013 Jul;43(7):705-15. doi: 10.1111/cea.12052.
Exhaled air contains many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are the result of normal and disease-associated metabolic processes anywhere in the body. Different omics techniques can assess the pattern of these VOCs. One such omics technique suitable for breath analysis is represented by electronic noses (eNoses), providing fingerprints of the exhaled VOCs, called breathprints. Breathprints have been shown to be altered in different disease states, including in asthma and COPD. This review describes the current status on clinical validation and application of breath analysis by electronic noses in the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic airways diseases. Furthermore, important methodological issues including breath sampling, modulating factors and incompatibility between eNoses are raised and discussed. Next steps towards clinical application of electronic noses are provided, including further validation in suspected disease, assessment of the influence of different comorbidities, the value in longitudinal monitoring of patients with asthma and COPD and the possibility to predict treatment responses. Eventually, a Breath Cloud may be constructed, a large database containing disease-specific breathprints. When collaborative efforts are put into optimization of this technique, it can provide a rapid and non-invasive first line diagnostic test.
呼气中含有许多挥发性有机化合物 (VOCs)，这些化合物是体内任何部位正常和与疾病相关的代谢过程的结果。不同的组学技术可以评估这些 VOCs 的模式。适合呼气分析的一种组学技术是电子鼻 (eNose)，它提供了呼气 VOCs 的指纹，称为呼吸图谱。已经表明，呼吸图谱在不同的疾病状态下发生了改变，包括哮喘和 COPD。本文综述了电子鼻在慢性气道疾病的诊断和监测中通过呼气分析进行临床验证和应用的现状。此外，还提出并讨论了重要的方法学问题，包括呼吸采样、调节因素和电子鼻之间的不兼容性。提供了迈向电子鼻临床应用的下一步措施，包括在疑似疾病中进一步验证、评估不同合并症的影响、在哮喘和 COPD 患者的纵向监测中的价值以及预测治疗反应的可能性。最终，可能会构建一个“呼吸云”，即包含特定疾病呼吸图谱的大型数据库。当协作努力优化这项技术时，它可以提供一种快速、非侵入性的一线诊断测试。
