Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Department of Medicine, National Jewish Health, Denver, CO, United States of America.
J Breath Res. 2022 May 13;16(3). doi: 10.1088/1752-7163/ac6bb6.
Pulmonary infections caused by mycobacteria cause significant mortality and morbidity in the human population. Diagnosing mycobacterial infections is challenging. An infection can lead to active disease or remain indolent with little clinical consequence. In patients with pulmonary(PNTM) identification of infection and diagnosis of disease can take months to years. Our previous studies showed the potential diagnostic power of volatile molecules in the exhaled breath samples to detect active pulmonaryinfection. Herein, we demonstrate the ability to detect the disease status of PNTM in the breath of persons with cystic fibrosis (PwCF). We putatively identified 17 volatile molecules that could discriminate between active-NTM disease (= 6), indolent patients (= 3), and those patients who have never cultured an NTM (= 2). The results suggest that further confirmation of the breath biomarkers as a non-invasive and culture-independent tool for diagnosis of NTM disease in a larger cohort of PwCF is warranted.
分枝杆菌引起的肺部感染在人群中导致显著的死亡率和发病率。分枝杆菌感染的诊断具有挑战性。感染可导致活动性疾病，也可保持惰性而无明显临床后果。在患有肺部（PNTM）的患者中，感染的识别和疾病的诊断可能需要数月至数年。我们之前的研究表明，呼气样本中的挥发性分子具有检测活动性肺部感染的潜在诊断能力。在此，我们证明了在囊性纤维化（PwCF）患者的呼吸中检测 PNTM 疾病状态的能力。我们推测鉴定了 17 种挥发性分子，它们可以区分活动性-NTM 疾病（= 6）、惰性患者（= 3）和从未培养出非结核分枝杆菌（NTM）的患者（= 2）。结果表明，有必要进一步确认这些呼吸生物标志物作为一种非侵入性和无需培养的工具，用于在更大的 PwCF 队列中诊断 NTM 疾病。
