Selective Collection of Exhaled Breath Condensate for Noninvasive Screening of Breath Glucose.

Abstract

Although exhaled breath condensate (EBC) is a promising noninvasive sample for detecting respiratory analytes such as glucose, current EBC collection methods yield inconsistent results. We developed a custom EBC collection device with a temperature-based algorithm to selectively condense alveolar air for reproducible EBC glucose detection. We characterized the condensate volumes and the corresponding glucose concentrations. We performed a pilot study demonstrating its use during oral glucose tolerance tests. The novel device selectively captured alveolar air resulting in slightly higher and less variable glucose concentrations than the overall EBC. Participants with type 2 diabetes demonstrated significantly higher blood plasma-EBC glucose ratios than normoglycemic participants. Temperature-based selective EBC collection allows EBC glucose measurement and is a promising sampling method to distinguish patients with and without diabetes.