Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T04:24:25.629Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Use of Breath Analysis for Diagnosing COVID-19: Opportunities, Challenges, and Considerations for Future Pandemic Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2021

Mustafa Abumeeiz ,
Lauren Elliott Open the ORCID record for Lauren Elliott [Opens in a new window]  and
Phillip Olla
Mustafa Abumeeiz
Affiliation:
Audacia Bioscience, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Lauren Elliott*
Affiliation:
Audacia Bioscience, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Phillip Olla
Affiliation:
Audacia Bioscience, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
*
Corresponding author: Lauren Elliott, Email: ellio11l@uwindsor.ca.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there is currently a need for accurate, rapid, and easy-to-administer diagnostic tools to help communities manage local outbreaks and assess the spread of disease. The use of artificial intelligence within the domain of breath analysis techniques has shown to have potential in diagnosing a variety of diseases, such as cancer and lung disease, by analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. This combined with their rapid, easy-to-use, and noninvasive nature makes them a good candidate for use in diagnosing COVID-19 in large scale public health operations. However, there remains issues with their implementation when it comes to the infrastructure currently available to support their use on a broad scale. This includes issues of standardization, and whether or not a characteristic VOC pattern can be identified for COVID-19. Despite these difficulties, breathalyzers offer potential to assist in pandemic responses and their use should be investigated.

Keywords

volatile organic compoundsCOVID-19technologypublic healthpandemicefficacy
Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 16 , Issue 5 , October 2022 , pp. 2137 - 2140
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. COVID-19 situation update worldwide, as of 17 July 2020. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/data-collection. Published July 17, 2020. Accessed November 3, 2020.Google Scholar
Nicola, M, Alsafi, Z, Sohrabi, C, et al. The socio-economic implications of the coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic: a review. Int J Surg. 2020;78:185-193. doi: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.04.018 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asadi, S, Bouvier, N, Wexler, AS, et al. The coronavirus pandemic and aerosols: does COVID-19 transmit via expiratory particles? Aerosol Sci Technol. 2020;54(6):635-638. doi: 10.1080/02786826.2020.1749229 Google Scholar
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Different COVID-19 vaccines. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines.html. Published April 23, 2021. Accessed May 1, 2021.Google Scholar
Bowman, E, Reeves, P. Brazil’s COVID-19 deaths top 400,000 amid fears of worsening crisis. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/04/29/992243462/brazil-covid-19-deaths-top-400-000-amid-fears-of-worsening-crisis. Published April 29, 2021. Accessed May 1, 2021.Google Scholar
Pandey, V, Nazmi, S. Covid-19 in India: why second coronavirus wave is devastating. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56811315. Published April 21, 2021. Accessed May 1, 2021.Google Scholar
Tanne, JH. Covid-19: FDA approves use of convalescent plasma to treat critically ill patients. BMJ. 2020;368:m1256. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m1256 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carter, LJ, Garner, LV, Smoot, JW, et al. Assay techniques and test development for COVID-19 diagnosis. ACS Cent Sci. 2020;6(5):591-605. doi: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c00501 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tang, YW, Schmitz, JE, Persing, DH, et al. Laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19: current issues and challenges. J Clin Microbiol. 2020;58(6):e00512-20. doi: 10.1128/JCM.00512-20 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoffman, T, Nissen, K, Krambrich, J, et al. Evaluation of a COVID-19 IgM and IgG rapid test; an efficient tool for assessment of past exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Infect Ecol Epidemiol. 2020;10(1):1754538. doi: 10.1080/20008686.2020.1754538 Google ScholarPubMed
Nguyen, T, Duong Bang, D, Wolff, A. 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19): paving the road for rapid detection and point-of-care diagnostics. Micromachines (Basel). 2020;11(3):306. doi: 10.3390/mi11030306 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Service, RF. Spit shines for easier coronavirus testing. Science. 2020;369(6507):1041-1042. doi: 10.1126/science.369.6507.1041 Google ScholarPubMed
Minnesota Department of Health. Types of COVID-19 tests. https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/testsites/types.html. Published March 26, 2021. Accessed July 25, 2021.Google Scholar
Wise, J. Covid-19: which rapid tests is the UK pinning its hopes on? BMJ. 2020;371:m3868. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m3868 Google Scholar
Laguarta, J, Hueto, F, Subirana, B. COVID-19 artificial intelligence diagnosis using only cough recordings. IEEE Open J Eng Med Biol. 2020;1:275-281. doi: 10.1109/OJEMB.2020.3026928 Google ScholarPubMed
Kuo, T-C, Tan, C-E, Wang, S-Y, et al. Human breathomics database. Database (Oxford). 2020;2020:baz139. doi: 10.1093/database/baz139CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bos, LD, Weda, H, Wang, Y, et al. Exhaled breath metabolomics as a noninvasive diagnostic tool for acute respiratory distress syndrome. Eur Respir J. 2014;44(1):188-197. doi: 10.1183/09031936.00005614 Google ScholarPubMed
Hanna, GB, Boshier, PR, Markar, SR, et al. Accuracy and methodologic challenges of volatile organic compound-based exhaled breath tests for cancer diagnosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Oncol. 2019;5(1):e182815. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.2815 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Behera, B, Joshi, R, Anil Vishnu, GK, et al. Electronic nose: a non-invasive technology for breath analysis of diabetes and lung cancer patients. J Breath Res. 2019;13(2):024001. doi: 10.1088/1752-7163/aafc77 Google ScholarPubMed
Durán-Acevedo, CM, Jaimes-Mogollón, AL, Gualdrón-Guerrero, OE, et al. Exhaled breath analysis for gastric cancer diagnosis in Colombian patients. Oncotarget. 2018;9(48):28805-28817. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.25331 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aslam, MA, Xue, C, Chen, Y, et al. Breath analysis based early gastric cancer classification from deep stacked sparse autoencoder neural network. Sci Rep. 2021;11(1):4014. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83184-2 Google ScholarPubMed
Fens, N, Zwinderman, AH, van der Schee, MP, et al. Exhaled breath profiling enables discrimination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2009;180(11):1076-1082. doi: 10.1164/rccm.200906-0939OC CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ghosh, C, Singh, V, Grandy, J, et al. Recent advances in breath analysis to track human health by new enrichment technologies. J Sep Sci. 2020;43(1):226-240. doi: 10.1002/jssc.201900769 Google ScholarPubMed
Broza, YY, Vishinkin, R, Barash, O, et al. Synergy between nanomaterials and volatile organic compounds for non-invasive medical evaluation. Chem Soc Rev. 2018;47(13):4781-4859. doi: 10.1039/C8CS00317C CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fens, N, Van der Schee, MP, Brinkman, P, et al. Exhaled breath analysis by electronic nose in airways disease. Established issues and key questions. Clin Exp Allergy. 2013;43(7):705-15. doi: 10.1111/cea.12052 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hashoul, D, Haick, H. Sensors for detecting pulmonary diseases from exhaled breath. Eur Respir Rev. 2019;28(152):190011. doi: 10.1183/16000617.0011-2019 Google ScholarPubMed
Broza, YY, Haick, H. Nanomaterial-based sensors for detection of disease by volatile organic compounds. Nanomedicine (Lond). 2013;8(5):785-806. doi: 10.2217/nnm.13.64 Google ScholarPubMed
Nakhleh, MK, Amal, H, Jeries, R, et al. Diagnosis and classification of 17 diseases from 1404 subjects via pattern analysis of exhaled molecules. ACS Nano. 2017;11(1):112-125. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.6b04930 Google ScholarPubMed
Vishinkin, R, Haick, H. Nanoscale sensor technologies for disease detection via volatolomics. Small. 2015;11(46):6142-6164. doi: 10.1002/smll.201501904 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Behera, B, Joshi, R, Anil Vishnu, GK, et al. Electronic nose: a non-invasive technology for breath analysis of diabetes and lung cancer patients. J Breath Res. 2019;13(2):024001. doi: 10.1088/1752-7163/aafc77 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koffarnus, MN, Bickel, WK, Kablinger, AS. Remote alcohol monitoring to facilitate incentive-based treatment for alcohol use disorder: a randomized trial. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2018;42(12):2423-2431. doi: 10.1111/acer.13891 Google ScholarPubMed
Lee, LM. Ethics and subsequent use of electronic health record data. J Biomed Inform. 2017;71:143-146. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2017.05.022 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masood, I, Wang, Y, Daud, A, et al. Towards smart healthcare: patient data privacy and security in sensor-cloud infrastructure. Wirel Commun Mob Comput. 2018;2018. doi: 10.1155/2018/2143897CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khoubnasabjafari, M, Jouyban-Gharamaleki, V, Ghanbari, R, et al. Exhaled breath condensate as a potential specimen for diagnosing COVID-19. Bioanalysis. 2020;12(17):1195-1197. doi: 10.4155/bio-2020-0083 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mason, B. Exhalation technology announces commercial launch and clinical update on CoronaCheck - a rapid Covid-19 test. EIN Presswire. https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/538125504/exhalation-technology-announces-commercial-launch-and-clinical-update-on-coronacheck-a-rapid-covid-19-test. Published April 7, 2021. Accessed April 28, 2021.Google Scholar
Maghded, HS, Ghafoor, KZ, Sadiq, AS, et al. A novel AI-enabled framework to diagnose coronavirus COVID-19 using smartphone embedded sensors: design study. In: 2020 IEEE 21st International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration for Data Science (IRI) 2020:180-187. doi: 10.1109/IRI49571.2020.00033Google Scholar
Krisher, S, Riley, A, Mehta, K. Designing breathalyser technology for the developing world: how a single breath can fight the double disease burden. J Med Eng Technol. 2014;38(3):156-163. doi: 10.3109/03091902.2014.890678 Google ScholarPubMed
Das, S, Pal, M. Non-invasive monitoring of human health by exhaled breath analysis: a comprehensive review. J Electrochem Soc. 2020;167(3):037562. doi: 10.1149/1945-7111/ab67a6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, MA, Pleil, JD. Evolution of clinical and environmental health applications of exhaled breath research: review of methods and instrumentation for gas-phase, condensate, and aerosols. Anal Chim Acta. 2018;1024:18-38. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2018.01.069 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conti, P, Caraffa, AI, Gallenga, CE, et al. The British variant of the new coronavirus-19 (Sars-Cov-2) should not create a vaccine problem. J Biol Regul Homeost Agents. 2021;35(1):1-4. doi: 10.23812/21-3-E Google Scholar