by Dr. Ching Wu, Founder and CEO, Excellims
Breath analysis has considerable potential as a truly non-invasive tool for clinical diagnosis and research.1 Volatile compounds in exhaled breath can reveal insights into a patient’s metabolic and nutritional state to support the elucidation of disease progression or to determine the effect of medication. Breath analysis can also pick up microbial infection and robustly detect intoxication or certain types of poisoning. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is the traditional, routine method for such analyses but there is considerable appetite for change. GC-MS is slow, relies on having an appropriate specialty gas supply and is also associated with high false positives for certain applications.
High performance ion mobility spectrometry (HPIMS) and HPIMS-MS platforms are prized for their ability to analyze rapidly and at the point of need. Equipped with a flexible ionization source, these platforms can be used to measure liquids, in configurations comparable to HPLC-MS, or gases, using corona discharged ionization or secondary electrospray ionization (SESI), in configurations comparable to GC-MS. This article examines the potential of HPIMS as a technique for breath analysis within the lab and as a potential clinical diagnostic, highlighting its capabilities for robust, real-time measurement at low cost. Experimental data illustrate the application of HPIMS paired with SESI to detect peppermint via breath analysis.
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