Breath analysis as a potential diagnostic tool for tuberculosis
Date
2012
Authors
Kolk A.H.J.
Van Berkel J.J.B.N.
Claassens M.M.
Walters E.
Kuijper S.
Dallinga J.W.
Van Schooten F.J.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
SETTING: Cape Town, South Africa. OBJECTIVES: We investigated the potential of breath analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to discriminate between samples collected prospectively from patients with suspected tuberculosis (TB). DESIGN: Samples were obtained in a TB-endemic setting in South Africa, where 28% of culture-proven TB patients had Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) negative sputum smear. A training set of breath samples from 50 sputum cultureproven TB patients and 50 culture-negative non-TB patients was analysed using GC-MS. We used support vector machine analysis for classification of the patient samples into TB and non-TB. RESULTS: A classification model with seven compounds had a sensitivity of 72%, a specificity of 86% and an accuracy of 79% compared with culture. The classification model was validated with breath samples from a different set of 21 TB and 50 non-TB patients from the same area, giving a sensitivity of 62%, a specificity of 84% and an accuracy of 77%. CONCLUSION: This study shows that GC-MS breath analysis is able to differentiate between TB and non-TB breath samples even among patients with a negative ZN sputum smear but a positive culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We conclude that breath analysis by GC-MS merits further research. © 2012 The Union.
Description
Keywords
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, Statistical analysis, Training set, Validation set, Volatile organic compounds
Citation
International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
16
6
777
782
16
6
777
782