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Analysis of volatile organic compounds from deep airway in the lung through intubation sampling

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Abstract

Exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been widely applied for the study of disease biomarkers. Oral exhalation and nasal exhalation are two of the most common sampling methods. However, VOCs released from food residues and bacteria in the mouth or upper respiratory tract were also sampled and usually mistaken as that produced from body metabolism. In this study, exhalation from deep airway was first directly collected through intubation sampling and analyzed. The exhalation samples of 35 subjects were collected through a catheter, which was inserted into the trachea or bronchus through the mouth and upper respiratory tract. Then, the VOCs in these samples were detected by proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS). In addition, fast gas chromatography proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (FGC-PTR-MS) was used to further determine the VOCs with the same mass-to-charge ratios. The results showed that there was methanol, acetonitrile, ethanol, methyl mercaptan, acetone, isoprene, and phenol in the deep airway. Compared with that in oral exhalation, ethanol, methyl mercaptan, and phenol had lower concentrations. In detail, the median concentrations of ethanol, methyl mercaptan, and phenol were 7.3, 0.6, and 23.9 ppbv, while those in the oral exhalation were 80.0, 5.1, and 71.3 ppbv, respectively, which meant the three VOCs mainly originated from the food residues and bacteria in the mouth or upper respiratory tract, rather than body metabolism. The research results in our study can provide references for expiratory VOC research based on oral and nasal exhalation samplings, which are more feasible in clinical practice.

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Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22076190, 21876176, 62171433, 21705152), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS, China (2019432), the Joint Fund between the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University and the Center of Medical Physics and Technology of Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of Chinese Academy of Sciences (LHJJ2020006), and the HFIPS Director’s Fund (BJPY2021B08, YZJJ2022QN45, YZJJZX202009), and the Anhui Provincial Key R&D Program (202104d07020003).

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  1. Wei Xu and Jin Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Medical Physics and Technology, Institute of Health and Medical Technology, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Wei Xu, Xue Zou, Dianlong Ge, Qiangling Zhang, Chaoqun Huang, Chengyin Shen & Yannan Chu

  2. University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Wei Xu

  3. The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Jin Zhang, Houwen Ding, Yueting Ding, Min Yang, Qiang Zhou, Zhou Liu, Ling Zheng & Heping Zuo

  4. Hefei Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Chengyin Shen

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  1. Wei Xu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xue Zou, Min Yang or Chengyin Shen.

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Ethics approval

This breath test project passed the check by the Ethics Committee of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University (approval number: YX 2020–003). All the exhalation sampling and breath tests were carried out with the informed consent of the subjects or their accompanying family members.

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Xu, W., Zhang, J., Ding, H. et al. Analysis of volatile organic compounds from deep airway in the lung through intubation sampling. Anal Bioanal Chem 414, 7647–7658 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04295-x

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