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: Source Type: research