TY - JOUR
T1 - Breath-Taking Perspectives and Preliminary Data toward Early Detection of Chronic Liver Diseases
AU - Murgia, Antonio
AU - Ahmed, Yusuf
AU - Sweeney, Kelly
AU - Nicholson-Scott, Louise
AU - Arthur, Kayleigh
AU - Allsworth, Max
AU - Boyle, Billy
AU - Gandelman, Olga
AU - Smolinska, Agnieszka
AU - Ferrandino, Giuseppe
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/10/28
Y1 - 2021/10/28
N2 - The gold standard method for chronic liver diseases diagnosis and staging remains liver biopsy, despite the spread of less invasive surrogate modalities based on imaging and blood biomarkers. Still, more than 50% of chronic liver disease cases are detected at later stages when patients exhibit episodes of liver decompensation. Breath analysis represents an attractive means for the development of non-invasive tests for several pathologies, including chronic liver diseases. In this perspective review, we summarize the main findings of studies that compared the breath of patients with chronic liver diseases against that of control subjects and found candidate biomarkers for a potential breath test. Interestingly, identified compounds with best classification performance are of exogenous origin and used as flavoring agents in food. Therefore, random dietary exposure of the general population to these compounds prevents the establishment of threshold levels for the identification of disease subjects. To overcome this limitation, we propose the exogenous volatile organic compounds (EVOCs) probe approach, where one or multiple of these flavoring agent(s) are administered at a standard dose and liver dysfunction associated with chronic liver diseases is evaluated as a washout of ingested compound(s). We report preliminary results in healthy subjects in support of the potential of the EVOC Probe approach.
AB - The gold standard method for chronic liver diseases diagnosis and staging remains liver biopsy, despite the spread of less invasive surrogate modalities based on imaging and blood biomarkers. Still, more than 50% of chronic liver disease cases are detected at later stages when patients exhibit episodes of liver decompensation. Breath analysis represents an attractive means for the development of non-invasive tests for several pathologies, including chronic liver diseases. In this perspective review, we summarize the main findings of studies that compared the breath of patients with chronic liver diseases against that of control subjects and found candidate biomarkers for a potential breath test. Interestingly, identified compounds with best classification performance are of exogenous origin and used as flavoring agents in food. Therefore, random dietary exposure of the general population to these compounds prevents the establishment of threshold levels for the identification of disease subjects. To overcome this limitation, we propose the exogenous volatile organic compounds (EVOCs) probe approach, where one or multiple of these flavoring agent(s) are administered at a standard dose and liver dysfunction associated with chronic liver diseases is evaluated as a washout of ingested compound(s). We report preliminary results in healthy subjects in support of the potential of the EVOC Probe approach.
KW - breath biopsy
KW - volatile organic compounds (VOC)
KW - chronic liver diseases
KW - VOLATILE ORGANIC-COMPOUNDS
KW - CHRONIC HEPATITIS-C
KW - EXHALED BREATH
KW - NITRIC-OXIDE
KW - LUNG-CANCER
KW - TISSUE INHIBITORS
KW - SERUM CONCENTRATIONS
KW - SIGNIFICANT FIBROSIS
KW - NONINVASIVE MARKERS
KW - HYDROGEN-PEROXIDE
U2 - 10.3390/biomedicines9111563
DO - 10.3390/biomedicines9111563
M3 - (Systematic) Review article
C2 - 34829792
SN - 2227-9059
VL - 9
JO - Biomedicines
JF - Biomedicines
IS - 11
M1 - 1563
ER -