Logan Zechella

The American Lung Association has published its latest press releases, sharing updates and statements from the organization. These communications address various lung health issues, ongoing research, and important advocacy efforts.

This article presents a novel aminooxy reagent designed to capture trace aldehyde and ketone volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. The reagent, 4-(2-aminooxyethyl)-morpholin-4-ium chloride (AMAH), retains carbonyl VOCs when coated on micropillars in a silicon microreactor. The captured compounds are then analyzed using mass spectrometry and gas chromatography, showcasing the method's versatility for breath analysis.

The study investigates the potential of breath analysis of carbonyl compounds as a non-invasive and cost-effective primary screening method for lung cancer. It highlights the high sensitivity and specificity of this method compared to traditional low-dose CT scans. The findings suggest promising implications for early lung cancer detection.

This study investigates the normalization of exhaled carbonyl compounds (ECCs) in patients post lung cancer resection. It highlights how these compounds can indicate lung cancer presence and the effects of surgical intervention on their levels. A substantial reduction in ECCs was observed, suggesting a potential utility in postoperative monitoring for lung cancer recurrence.

Our feasibility study demonstrates that a single UV absorbance measurement of a concentrated breath sample has promise as a screening approach to detect increased levels of carbonyl compounds, which may be indicative of a disease state such as COVID-19.

UHPLC-MS in combination with a MEMS-fabricated silicon microreactor was used to analyze carbonyl compounds in exhaled breath to differentiate COVID-19 positive and negative subjects. The sensitivity increased when modeling variants separately. The overall results are promising for SARS-CoV-2 detection. When all positive (both Alpha and Delta) and all negative samples were used for training a logistic regression algorithm, the model still achieved 90.1% sensitivity, 98.3% specificity and 94.7% accuracy.

The combination of a silicon microreactor for the selective capture of carbonyl compounds with UHPLC-MS analysis may provide a quantitative method for the analysis of carbonyls to identify disease markers in exhaled breath.