Determination of breath isoprene in 109 suspected lung cancer patients using cavity ringdown spectroscopy

Background: Lung cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide. Currently, effective screening methods for early lung cancer are still scarce. Breath analysis provides a promising method for the pre-screening or early screening of lung cancer. Isoprene is a potential and important breath biomarker of lung cancer. Material and Methods: To investigate the clinical value of isoprene for diagnosing lung cancer patients, a cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS) based near-real time, sensitive analysis method of breath isoprene is developed in our lab. In this paper, 92 breath samples from lung cancer patients, 17 breath samples from patients with benign lesions, and 107 breath samples from healthy people were collected. Results: Research indicates that breath isoprene concentration is significantly higher in healthy individuals (221.3 +/- 122.2ppbv) than in patients with lung cancer (112.0 +/- 36.6ppbv) and benign lung lesions (127.9 +/- 41.2ppbv). The result of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve suggests that the concentration of isoprene is meaningful for the diagnosis of lung cancer (AUC = 0.822, sensitivity = 63.6%, specificity = 90.2%, P < 0.01). Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the CRDS breath isoprene analysis system can effectively analyze a large sample of human breath isoprene, and preliminarily confirms the use of breath isoprene as a biomarker for lung diseases.

Automated summary

This study developed a CRDS-based breath isoprene analysis method and found that the concentration of isoprene is significantly higher in healthy individuals compared to lung cancer patients and patients with benign lung lesions. The concentration of isoprene is meaningful for the diagnosis of lung cancer.