Lichtenstein Moria, Turjerman Sondra, Pinto Jayant M, Barash Orna, Koren Omry
NanoScent Labs Ltd., Teradyon Industrial Park, Israel.
Azriely Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan Universitygrid.22098.31, Safed, Israel.
mSystems. 2021 Aug 31;6(4):e0010421. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00104-21. Epub 2021 Jul 27.
Among the many products of metabolic processes are volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In the airways, these volatile metabolites are emitted through breathing and thus are easily sampled for analysis. Recent work has connected the functions and structure of the human microbiome with health and disease. Alteration in microbial function in this context can result in differences in metabolite composition, including that of VOCs, presenting the possibility of a new noninvasive method for clinical diagnosis. Screening methods that assess VOCs arising from changes in the airway microbiome could be highly useful in diagnosing viral upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs), e.g., COVID-19, which are highly contagious and have an enormous public health impact worldwide. A rapid noninvasive screening test for URTIs would pose major advantages in containing the disease. As early evidence shows that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection alters the human microbiome (both in the gut and the respiratory tract), we propose that detection of a VOC signature of an altered nasal microbiome could be fruitful as a rapid noninvasive measure of URTI in general and of SARS-CoV-2 in particular.
挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）是代谢过程的众多产物之一。在气道中，这些挥发性代谢物通过呼吸排出，因此很容易采集样本进行分析。最近的研究将人类微生物组的功能和结构与健康和疾病联系起来。在这种情况下，微生物功能的改变会导致代谢物组成的差异，包括VOCs的差异，这为临床诊断提供了一种新的非侵入性方法的可能性。评估气道微生物组变化产生的VOCs的筛查方法在诊断病毒性上呼吸道感染（URTIs），如新冠病毒病（COVID-19）方面可能非常有用，这些感染具有高度传染性，对全球公共卫生有巨大影响。一种快速的URTIs非侵入性筛查测试在控制疾病方面将具有重大优势。早期证据表明，严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）感染会改变人类微生物组（包括肠道和呼吸道），我们提出，检测鼻腔微生物组改变的VOC特征作为一种快速的非侵入性测量方法，总体上对URTIs尤其是对SARS-CoV-2可能是有成效的。
