Breath test may pick up lung cancer

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

New research suggests that a breath test can detect early stage lung cancer.
Lung cancer is often diagnosed at a late stage, when treatment is less likely to be successful. Now researchers describe a revolutionary new technology which can detect early stage lung cancer with at least moderate accuracy.

The new test consists of a color sensor which can detect tiny chemical changes in the breath of people with lung cancer. These occur because when a cell becomes malignant, changes occur in the production and processing of volatile biochemical compounds. These are exhaled in breath and are picked up by the sensor. In a trial, the breath test was used with 122 people with different types of respiratory disease, 49 of who had small cell lung cancer at various stages, and on 21 healthy people. The researchers used data on 70 per cent of the participants to develop a predictive model for lung cancer diagnosis, which was then tested on the remaining 30 per cent. This showed that the new test can predict the presence of lung cancer in three out of four who have it. This approach could lead to a simple and inexpensive way of detecting early stage lung cancer, which could help improve outcomes for those affected by the disease.

Source
Thorax online 25th February 2007

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