"Electronic nose" can smell asthma

Last Updated: 2007-11-07 16:58:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An electronic nose, a device that senses volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath, can distinguish patients with asthma from healthy individuals, according to a report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Exhaled breath contains thousands of VOCs that could serve as markers of asthma and other lung diseases, the authors explain, and electronic noses can use pattern recognition to classify different VOC mixtures.

Dr. Peter J. Sterk from the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and colleagues used an electronic nose to compare the exhaled breath of patients with an established diagnosis of asthma with that of healthy subjects.

Ten young adults with mild asthma were compared with 10 similar healthy subjects, and 10 older patients with severe asthma were compared with 10 healthy peers.

"Smellprints" of young patients with mild asthma were distinguished from those of comparison subjects with 100 percent accuracy, the authors report, and smellprints of patients with severe asthma were distinguished from those of comparison subjects with 90 percent accuracy.

Smellprints were less effective in discriminating patients with mild asthma from patients with severe asthma, the investigators say.

"Our findings warrant further validation of electronic noses regarding their ability to correctly identify (new) patients with asthma," the authors conclude.

"If successful, electronic noses have the potential to become convenient devices for physicians and nurses for handheld, noninvasive, and rapid diagnosis of asthma," Sterk and colleagues point out.

"In addition, validation of electronic noses in other respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or lung cancer, seems to be mandatory."

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, October 2007.