Simple breath test may detect lung cancer

Lung cancer may be detected in patients by testing their exhaled breath, scientists say.
Certain chemicals in exhaled breath could serve as biomarkers for lung cancer, according to researchers at Cleveland Clinic in the US.
Preliminary studies suggest that an accurate exhaled breath biomarker could be developed for use as a clinical test, researchers said.
"We believe that cancer cells release a unique chemical signature related to the tumour-growing process," said Peter J Mazzone, director of the lung cancer programme for the Respiratory Institute at Cleveland Clinic.
"We are currently developing a breath-based test based on the results of our research," Mazzone said.

Mazzone and his colleagues studied 82 people with biopsy-confirmed lung cancer who had not yet received treatment against a control group of 155 people who were either at-risk for lung cancer or who had benign lung nodules.

Subjects were asked to breathe normally while their breath was exposed to a high-dimensional chemical sensor called a colorimetric sensor array.
The colours on the array change when exposed to various chemicals. If the chemicals in the breath contained markers for lung cancer, the array would show that in a pattern of colour changes.
The colorimetric sensor array continually monitored the chemicals exhaled from the breath of the subjects, resulting in sensor changes that accurately distinguished the breath of people with lung cancer from the controls.

The findings were presented at CHEST 2013, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), in Chicago, Illinois.