Breath-Based Diagnostics for Lower Respiratory Infections

Acute pulmonary infections, or pneumonia, are a leading cause of infectious death worldwide with more than 2.3 million deaths each year. Existing strategies for diagnosing pneumonia are based on clinical, radiological and microbial criteria, which is time-consuming, low accuracy, and subject to interobserver variability. Furthermore, obtaining a lower lung specimen is a difficult and invasive procedure.

 

Coccidioidomycosis, or Valley Fever (VF), is a systemic fungal infection that is endemic to the Southwest United States and some parts of South America. VFs clinical presentation resembles other infectious diseases, thus accurate diagnoses are difficult and often delayed. There is a significant unmet need to distinguish and diagnose VF from pneumonia caused by other lung infections.

 

Researchers at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University have developed a novel tool and prediction model that discriminates fungal pneumonia coccidioidomycosis from bacterial pneumonia with 99% accuracy. By studying volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with Coccidioides, they were able to develop a breath-based test that has greater sensitivity while being less invasive. Untargeted volatile metabolomics analysis was performed on bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from patients with suspected pneumonia to identify these VOCs which discriminate between patients infected with either Coccidioides, some other microbial lung pathogen, or no detectable infection.

 

This novel breath-based VOC test is able to discriminate VF from bacterial etiologies of pneumonia and could go a long way in enabling earlier VF diagnosis and accurate treatment.

 

Potential Applications

 

Benefits and Advantages