| Title: | Advanced setup for safe breath sampling and patient monitoring under highly infectious conditions in the clinical environment |
| Author(s): | Sukul P; Trefz P; Schubert JK; Miekisch W; |
| Address: | "Rostock Medical Breath Research Analytics and Technologies (ROMBAT), Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, University Medicine Rostock, Schillingallee 35, 18057, Rostock, Germany. pritam.sukul@uni-rostock.de. Rostock Medical Breath Research Analytics and Technologies (ROMBAT), Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, University Medicine Rostock, Schillingallee 35, 18057, Rostock, Germany" |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-022-22581-7 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 2045-2322 (Electronic) 2045-2322 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Being the proximal matrix, breath offers immediate metabolic outlook of respiratory infections. However, high viral load in exhalations imposes higher transmission risk that needs improved methods for safe and repeatable analysis. Here, we have advanced the state-of-the-art methods for real-time and offline mass-spectrometry based analysis of exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) under SARS-CoV-2 and/or similar respiratory conditions. To reduce infection risk, the general experimental setups for direct and offline breath sampling are modified. Certain mainstream and side-stream viral filters are examined for direct and lab-based applications. Confounders/contributions from filters and optimum operational conditions are assessed. We observed immediate effects of infection safety mandates on breath biomarker profiles. Main-stream filters induced physiological and analytical effects. Side-stream filters caused only systematic analytical effects. Observed substance specific effects partly depended on compound's origin and properties, sampling flow and respiratory rate. For offline samples, storage time, -conditions and -temperature were crucial. Our methods provided repeatable conditions for point-of-care and lab-based breath analysis with low risk of disease transmission. Besides breath VOCs profiling in spontaneously breathing subjects at the screening scenario of COVID-19/similar test centres, our methods and protocols are applicable for moderately/severely ill (even mechanically-ventilated) and highly contagious patients at the intensive care" |
| Keywords: | "Humans *Volatile Organic Compounds/analysis *COVID-19/diagnosis SARS-CoV-2 Breath Tests/methods Exhalation Biomarkers/analysis Monitoring, Physiologic;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineSukul, Pritam Trefz, Phillip Schubert, Jochen K Miekisch, Wolfram eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't England 2022/10/27 Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 26; 12(1):17926. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-22581-7" |
