Chemical sensor approach to volatile phenotyping of respiratory diseases

A system for exhaled breath non-invasive collection, storage, delivery and analysis represents a breakthrough for diagnostic application in clinical routine. It gives the opportunity to perform standard measurements in a multicenter context opening the way to a chemical phenotyping of respiratory diseases usually defined in terms of physical parameters. The complete measure chain is composed of: An innovative and EU-patented device for exhaled breath collection onto an adsorbing cartridge; an apparatus for the thermal desorption of the cartridge and a novel gas sensor array based on quartz micro balances functionalized with sensing materials of biological source. The populations of the pilot study are: 5 control subjects and 20 Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseased (COPD) patients at four different stages, correctly discriminated in 88% of the cases; a larger population of 71 COPD patients and 93 individual suspected of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS), discriminated with 79% of correct classification.