Breath test can detect breast cancer
Scientists at Menssana Research, collaborating with universities such as Imperial College in London, say they have overcome the technical problems of detecting breast cancer.
Doctors have known since the Middle Ages that the aroma of breath can be a clue to what’s wrong with a patient.
For example, there is a sweet smell of acetone in patients with uncontrolled diabetes, the fishy odour to advanced liver disease, as well as a urine-like smell that comes when kidneys are failing.
Scientists have long suspected that there are other, less obvious clues to disease in the breath, but until now have lacked the knowledge and equipment to use them.
Although there are reckoned to be more than 400 different breath chemicals that could be used, most are present in such small amounts – one part in a trillion in some cases – they have been difficult to pick up.
Now scientists at Menssana Research, working with a number of universities including Imperial College in London, say they have overcome the technical problems and have developed a number of tests to detect the chemical changes in the body when someone has cancer or other diseases.
They have also produced a portable breath-collection device for collecting samples. A patient breathes though a small steel tube the size of a cigarette for two minutes and an absorbent pad or trap in the tube captures a breath sample.
The contents of the trap are then analysed to see which chemicals are present. The researchers say that subtle but distinctive changes in the content for individual diseases, including different cancers, give each disease its own ‘breath fingerprint’.
This breath test is now being evaluated in several clinical studiesincluding lung cancer, breast cancer, heart transplant rejection, kidney disease, heart disease and diabetes.
The first trial results on the breast-cancer test have shown that in some situations it was as good as the results from mammograms.
In the trial, doctors set out to see if they could pick up the elevated levels of these compounds. The trial involved around 200 women, and included women with a normal mammogram and those with an abnormal mammogram whose biopsy was either positive or negative for breast cancer.
‘We found that breath was altered in those with breast cancer, and provided an accurate new marker of the disease,’ say Menssana researchers.
‘The breath test distinguished between women with breast cancer and healthy volunteers with a sensitivity of 94.1 per cent.’
The researchers have also been working with Imperial College on a breath test for lung cancer. A pilot study at two centres, including Imperial, has found that a combination-of 22 breath compounds may be an indicator of lung cancer. A second study has shown that the breath test provided an accurate early marker of disease, and a larger trial is now under way.
A third study is under way on a breath test for pulmonary TB, and other tests are in the pipeline for other conditions.
Doctors in Scotland have been investigating breath tests and schizophrenia and say that it’s possible that a simple breath test could be used to both diagnose and monitor the disease.
Category: Features, Technology & Devices
