Ex vivo innate responses to particulate matter from livestock farms in asthma patients and healthy individuals.

Background: Asthma patients suffer from periodic acute worsening of symptoms (i.e. loss of asthma control or exacerbations), triggered by a variety of exogenous stimuli.

Corticosteroid Withdrawal-Induced Loss of Control in Mild to Moderate Asthma Is Independent of Classic Granulocyte Activation.

Background: Loss of asthma control and asthma exacerbations are associated with increased sputum eosinophil counts. However, whether eosinophils, or the also present neutrophils, actively contribute to the accompanying inflammation has not been extensively investigated.

Methods: Twenty-three patients with mild to moderate asthma were included in a standardized prospective inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) withdrawal study; 22 of the patients experienced loss of asthma control.

A European Respiratory Society technical standard: exhaled biomarkers in lung disease.

Breath tests cover the fraction of nitric oxide in expired gas (), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), variables in exhaled breath condensate (EBC) and other measurements. For EBC and for , official recommendations for standardised procedures are more than 10 years old and there is none for exhaled VOCs and particles. The aim of this document is to provide technical standards and recommendations for sample collection and analytic approaches and to highlight future research priorities in the field.

Smelling the Diagnosis: The Electronic Nose as Diagnostic Tool in Inflammatory Arthritis. A Case-Reference Study.

Objective: To investigate whether exhaled breath analysis using an electronic nose can identify differences between inflammatory joint diseases and healthy controls.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, the exhaled breath of 21 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 18 psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients with active disease was compared to 21 healthy controls using an electronic nose (Cyranose 320; Smiths Detection, Pasadena, CA, USA). Breathprints were analyzed with principal component analysis, discriminant analysis, and area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves.

Comparison of classification methods in breath analysis by electronic nose.

Currently, many different methods are being used for pre-processing, statistical analysis and validation of data obtained by electronic nose technology from exhaled air. These various methods, however, have never been thoroughly compared. We aimed to empirically evaluate and compare the influence of different dimension reduction, classification and validation methods found in published studies on the diagnostic performance in several datasets.

Toward composite molecular signatures in the phenotyping of asthma.

The complex biology of respiratory diseases such as asthma is feeding the discovery of various disease phenotypes. Although the clinical management of asthma phenotypes by using a single biomarker (e.g.

Subphenotypes of mild-to-moderate COPD by factor and cluster analysis of pulmonary function, CT imaging and breathomics in a population-based survey.

Introduction: Classification of COPD is currently based on the presence and severity of airways obstruction. However, this may not fully reflect the phenotypic heterogeneity of COPD in the (ex-) smoking community. We hypothesized that factor analysis followed by cluster analysis of functional, clinical, radiological and exhaled breath metabolomic features identifies subphenotypes of COPD in a community-based population of heavy (ex-) smokers.

Airway inflammation and mannitol challenge test in COPD.

Background: Eosinophilic airway inflammation has successfully been used to tailor anti-inflammatory therapy in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) by indirect challenges is associated with airway inflammation. We hypothesized that AHR to inhaled mannitol captures eosinophilia in induced sputum in COPD.

Electronic nose breathprints are independent of acute changes in airway caliber in asthma.

Molecular profiling of exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOC) by electronic nose technology provides breathprints that discriminate between patients with different inflammatory airway diseases, such as asthma and COPD. However, it is unknown whether this is determined by differences in airway caliber. We hypothesized that breathprints obtained by electronic nose are independent of acute changes in airway caliber in asthma.

Exhaled breath profiling enables discrimination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma.

Rationale: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma can exhibit overlapping clinical features. Exhaled air contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may qualify as noninvasive biomarkers. VOC profiles can be assessed using integrative analysis by electronic nose, resulting in exhaled molecular fingerprints (breathprints).