Impact of hemodialysis on exhaled volatile organic compounds in end-stage renal disease: a pilot study

Aim: To demonstrate the feasibility of nanomaterial-based sensors for identifying patterns of exhaled volatile organic compound of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and study the impact of hemodialysis (HD) on these patterns. Patients & methods: Exhaled breath samples were collected from a group of 37 volunteers (26 ESRD HD patients; 11 healthy controls); a third of the samples were randomly blinded for determining the sensitivity/specificity of the method. Discriminant function analysis was used to build a model for discriminating ESRD patients and healthy controls (classification accuracy for blind samples: 80%), based on the signals of the nanomaterial sensors. Results & conclusion: The breath pattern of the ESRD patients approached the healthy pattern during the HD treatment, without reaching it completely. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry identified four volatile organic compounds as potential ESRD biomarkers. Although this pilot study has yielded encouraging results, additional large-scale clinical studies are required to develop a fast, noninvasive breath test for monitoring HD adequacy in real time.