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This clinical study presents a comprehensive investigation into the utility of breath analysis as a non-invasive method for the early detection of lung cancer. The study enrolled 14 lung cancer patients, 14 non-lung cancer controls with diverse medical conditions, and 3 tuberculosis (TB) patients for biomarker discovery. Matching criteria including age, gender, smoking history, and comorbidities were strictly followed to ensure reliable comparisons. A systematic breath sampling protocol utilizing a BIO-VOC sampler was employed, followed by VOC analysis using Thermal Desorption–Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC/MS). The resulting VOC profiles were subjected to stringent statistical analysis, including Orthogonal Projections to Latent Structures—Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA), Kruskal–Wallis test, and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. Notably, 13 VOCs exhibited statistically significant differences between lung cancer patients and controls. The combination of eight VOCs (hexanal, heptanal, octanal, benzaldehyde, undecane, phenylacetaldehyde, decanal, and benzoic acid) demonstrated substantial discriminatory power with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.85, a sensitivity of 82%, and a specificity of 76% in the discovery set. Validation in an independent cohort yielded an AUC of 0.78, a sensitivity of 78%, and a specificity of 64%. Further analysis revealed that elevated aldehyde levels in lung cancer patients’ breath could be attributed to overactivated Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH) pathways in cancerous tissues. Addressing methodological challenges, this study employed a matching of physiological and pathological confounders, controlled room air samples, and standardized breath sampling techniques. Despite the limitations, this study’s findings emphasize the potential of breath analysis as a diagnostic tool for lung cancer and suggest its utility in differentiating tuberculosis from lung cancer. However, further research and validation are warranted for the translation of these findings into clinical practice.
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Revolutionising disease detection: The emergence of non-invasive VOC breathomics Breathomics marks a revolutionary approach to disease detection by analyzing the chemical composition of exhaled breath. As the world recovers from the recent global health crises, the detection and management of pandemic diseases like COVID-19, RSV, and flu have come to the forefront. The COVID-19 pandemic alone has affected over 96 million people in the US, with a devastating count of more than a million fatalities. Similarly, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza (flu) collectively burden the healthcare system with millions of cases annually, leading to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths. These staggering statistics underscore an urgent need for diagnostic methods that are not only swift and accurate but also non- invasive to facilitate rapid, widespread testing. Enter Breathomics—a revolutionary approach that analyzes the chemical composition of exhaled breath to detect diseases.
