Elisabetta Santarellia, Vicky Caponigroa, Silvia Moscab, Andrea Mannic, Michele Di Stefanod, Maria Grazia Bonellie, Ettore Guerrierob, Carlo Crescenzia

aDipartimento di Farmacia, Università degli Studi di Salerno, 84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy;
bIstituto sull’Inquinamento Atmosferico, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), 00010 Montelibretti (RM), Italy;
cSpectra 2000 Srl, 00133 Roma, Italy;
dDipartimento di Medicina Interna, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, 27100 Pavia, Italy;
eRagioneria Generale dello Stato, Ministero di Economia e Finanza, 000187 Roma, Italy;

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in human exhaled breath, though present in only trace concentrations (ppm or lower), can still hold significant clinical relevance. As an individual transitions from a healthy to a pathological state, their breath VOCs profile shifts in ways that can be detected and potentially used for disease detection and health monitoring [1]. Several studies have reported the use of VOC-based breath tests for the rapid and non-invasive detection of various diseases, including cirrhosis [2], asthma [3], colorectal cancer [4], and lung cancer [5]. We collected 30 exhaled breath samples from patients with various gastrointestinal conditions, which were then analyzed by Thermal Desorption-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC-MS). 

The resulting data underwent pre-processing in order to generate a reliable data matrix for subsequent statistical analysis. The conventional approaches (involving denoising, baseline correction, alignment, peak picking, and data matrix construction) were compared to innovative chemometric techniques.

Acknowledgments: This work was supported by Spectra 2000 Srl, 00133 Roma, Italy.

Keywords: Exhaled Breath, Volatile Organic Compounds, TD-GC-MS, Chemometrics.

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