Inflammatory asthma phenotype discrimination using an electronic nose breath analyzer

Background and objective: patients with persistent asthma have different inflammatory phenotypes. the electronic nose is a new technology capable of distinguishing volatile organic compound (voc) breath-prints in exhaled breath. the aim of the study was to investigate the capacity of electronic nose breath-print analysis to discriminate between different inflammatory asthma phenotypes (eosinophilic,neutrophilic,paucigranulocytic) determined by induced sputum in patients with persistent asthma. methods: fifty-two patients with persistent asthma were consecutively included in a cross-sectional proof-of-concept study. inflammatory asthma phenotypes (eosinophilic,neutrophilic and paucigranulocytic) were recognized by inflammatory cell counts in induced sputum. voc breath-prints were analyzed using the electronic nose cyranose 320 and assessed by discriminant analysis on principal component reduction,resulting in cross-validated accuracy values. receiver operating characteristic (roc) curves were calculated. results: voc breath-prints were different in eosinophilic asthmatics compared with both neutrophilic asthmatics (accuracy 73%; p=.008; area under roc,0.92) and paucigranulocytic asthmatics (accuracy 74%; p=.004; area under roc,0.79). likewise,neutrophilic and paucigranulocytic breath-prints were also different (accuracy 89%; p=.001; area under roc,0.88). conclusion: an electronic nose can discriminate inflammatory phenotypes in patients with persistent asthma in a regular clinical setting. clinicaltrials.gov identifier: nct02026336. © 2015 esmon publicidad.