Breath Analysis of COVID-19 Patients in a Tertiary UK Hospital by Optical Spectrometry: The E-Nose CoVal Study

Abstract

Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, diagnostic technology played a crucial role in managing outbreaks on a national and global level. One diagnostic modality that has shown promise is breath analysis, due to its non-invasive nature and ability to give a rapid result. In this study, a portable FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red) spectrometer was used to detect chemical components in the breath from Covid positive symptomatic and asymptomatic patients versus a control cohort of Covid negative patients. Eighty-five patients who had a nasopharyngeal polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 within the last 5 days were recruited to the study (36 symptomatic PCR positive, 23 asymptomatic PCR positive and 26 asymptomatic PCR negative). Data analysis indicated significant difference between the groups, with SARS-CoV-2 present on PCR versus the negative PCR control group producing an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87. Similar results were obtained comparing symptomatic versus control and asymptomatic versus control. The asymptomatic results were higher than the symptomatic (0.88 vs. 0.80 AUC). When analysing individual chemicals, we found ethanol, methanol and acetaldehyde were the most important, with higher concentrations in the COVID-19 group, with symptomatic patients being higher than asymptomatic patients. This study has shown that breath analysis can provide significant results that distinguish patients with or without COVID-19 disease/carriage.