Summary: Did you know that your breath can reveal crucial insights about your health? Cutting-edge research into Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath is unveiling new ways to diagnose diseases like lung cancer, COVID-19, and more. This non-invasive technology could revolutionise how we detect and manage health conditions. Imagine having the power to monitor your health right from home and with 0 pain!
Breathing is a term so widely used that we don’t need to define it, yet somehow we’ve been ignoring an essential realisation. We learn that oxygen is inhaled and used in the body, then waste products like carbon dioxide and nitrogen are exhaled out. This raises the question: can breath composition be studied as a proxy to understand what is going on inside the body?
Breath Science is the study of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the breath, of which over 1000+ exist! VOCs are created in the body as a result of various physiological processes, get distributed through the blood, exchanged in the lungs, and are then exhaled. Therefore, there is potential to map which and how many VOCs are byproducts of different cellular processes. However, one can imagine the vast number of permutation combinations possible here considering the massive physiological overlap in diseases.
Recently, there has been a shift towards non-invasive diagnostic methods, with numerous research studies emerging where diseases are being predicted and/or measured through breath analysis. Notably, a team in New Delhi reported identifying 16 VOCs that can predict lung cancer, and a team in Michigan identified 4 VOCs that could identify some variants of COVID-19. Several other teams have correlated exhaled breath VOCs with sclerosis, tuberculosis, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases. Essentially, each disease or cellular process has a distinct "signature" in terms of VOCs, which modern technology can innovate to catch and evaluate.
If the potential for such diagnostic capabilities exists, why hasn’t it been fully realised yet?
The challenge lies in developing technology that meets specific criteria: reproducibility and accuracy, cost-effectiveness, fast response times, and ultra-low detection limits compared to existing methods.
BreathAI is addressing these challenges and going one step further by trying to make this technology available for personal care and home use! Such technology need not be limited to laboratories and hospitals. They hold promise for early disease detection, personalised insights, and continuous health monitoring, empowering individuals to take proactive steps towards better health!
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