The future of 13C-breath tests

Abstract

13C-breath tests are widely applied as a tool to investigate metabolic processes and infectious diseases, but most of them have not yet entered into clinical practice. In order to promote the introduction of more 13C-breath tests into clinical routine application we evaluated the tests so far known with respect to some reasonable criteria, which are valued by one of three marks. The sum Σ of these marks is assumed as a measure of the total value of the respective 13C-breath test. In this way we arrived at 10 tests with a Σ value of 10 or more points which seem to have an especially high potential to successfully enter into clinical practice. This is particularly true for the 13C-breath tests with urea, aminopyrine, acetate, galactose, caffeine, octanoic acid, and phenylalanine as substrates. Measures are proposed for promoting the clinical application of such tests.