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Volatile organic compounds in breath show promise as biomarkers for IBS
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Researchers have identified a set of 16 volatile organic compounds in the breath that together may serve as biomarkers with potential utility in the diagnosis and monitoring of irritable bowel syndrome.
“Now we know which chemicals in breath have diagnostic information that we can use to develop noninvasive tools to follow the disease and to steer therapeutic interventions,” Frederik-Jan van Schooten, PhD, from the department of pharmacology and toxicology at the School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism, Maastricht University Medical Center, the Netherlands, said in a press release. “This will definitely make a difference in quality of life for patients suffering from this functional gastrointestinal disorder.”
To determine and validate a set of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can differentiate IBS patients from controls without GI symptoms, van Schooten and colleagues collected breath samples from 170 IBS patients and 153 age- and sex-matched healthy controls from the Maastricht IBS clinical cohort. Then they evaluated correlations between the VOC biomarkers and self-reported GI symptoms in the clinical cohort (abdominal pain, discomfort, flatulence and belching) and in 1,307 participants in a general population cohort (abdominal pain, flatulence, belching, bloating, diarrhea and nausea).
They found a set of 16 VOCs accurately predicted 89.4% of IBS patients and 73.3% of healthy controls (AUC = 0.83), and moderately correlated with a set of GI symptoms in the clinical (P = .0003) and general population cohorts (P = .0004). Using a Kruskal-Wallis test, they confirmed that potential confounding factors — including diet, smoking, alcohol, anxiety or depression, dietary supplements or medications — had no influence on the VOC panel’s ability to differentiate between IBS patients and healthy controls.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that a set of VOCs in exhaled air was able to predict the presence of a common functional GI disorder, which can be considered an important first step forward in the design and development of reliable noninvasive biomarkers for IBS.” – by Adam Leitenberger
Disclosures : The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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