Investigating the relationship between breath aerosol size and exhaled breath condensate (EBC) metabolomic content
Exhaled breath aerosols contain valuable metabolomic content due to gas exchange with blood at the
alveolar capillary interface in the lung. Passive and selective filtering of these aerosols and
droplets may reduce the amount of saliva contaminants and serve as an aid to enhance targeted
metabolomic content when sampled in exhaled breath condensate (EBC). It is currently unknown if
breath aerosol size distribution affects the types or abundances of metabolites sampled through EBC.
This pilot study uses a previously described hand-held human breath sampler device with varying
notch filter geometries to redirect the trajectory of breath aerosols based on size. Ten notch
filter lengths were simulated with the device to calculate the effect of filter length on the breath
aerosol size distribution and the proportion of aerosols which make their way through to an EBC
collection tube. From three notch filter lengths, we investigate metabolite content of various
aerosol fractions. We an...
Source: Journal of Breath Research - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Alexander J Schmidt, Eva Borras, Nicholas J Kenyon and Cristina E Davis Source Type: research
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