How To Check For Infection? Just Exhale.

Researchers can now detect bacterial infection by analyzing biomarkers exhaled by patients.

AsianScientist (Jun. 15, 2016) – To help tackle the overuse of antibiotics, scientists in China have begun a pilot study examining biomarkers exhaled by patients. Their initial results are published in the Journal of Breath Research.

The goal of the research team, which hails from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine, is to develop an efficient, accurate, painless and affordable test that will assist doctors in prescribing antibiotics only when absolutely necessary.

For the proof-of-concept study, the researchers chose to focus on ventilator-associated pneumonia patients in the intensive care unit. Here, to avoid prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily, it is critically important to differentiate between life-threatening bacterial infection and common colonization.

“To confirm whether patients have a bacterial infection of the respiratory tract, doctors currently have to take a number of different samples (blood and sputum) and even chest X-rays in the case of pneumonia,” explained Dr. Ying Kejing, who was the lead coordinator on the study.

Using benchtop analytical methods to analyze the breath samples from 60 volunteers, the scientists found a potentially useful link between the presence of exhaled Acinetobacter baumannii-derived volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and patients diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia. A. baumannii is recognized to be among the most difficult antibiotic-resistant bacteria to control and treat.

“The challenge we face is that many VOCs are not unique to one pathogen,” said Ying, describing the limitation of the method in discriminating between bacteria species.

The researchers hope that their research will lead to a clinically-approved non-invasive test that can provide an early warning of bacterial infection in the lower respiratory tract.


The article can be found at: Gao et al. (2016) Breath Analysis for Noninvasively Differentiating Acinetobacter baumannii Ventilator-associated Pneumonia from its Respiratory Tract Colonization of Ventilated Patients.

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Source: IOP Publishing; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

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