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. 2025 Jan;19(1):161-164.
doi: 10.1177/19322968231179728. Epub 2023 Jul 4.

Selective Collection of Exhaled Breath Condensate for Noninvasive Screening of Breath Glucose

Aditya Desai  1 , Divya Tankasala  1 , Gabriel P Ng  1 , Pankti Thakkar  1 , Orlando S Hoilett  1 , Kieren J Mather  2 , Jacqueline C Linnes  1
Affiliations

Selective Collection of Exhaled Breath Condensate for Noninvasive Screening of Breath Glucose

Aditya Desai et al. J Diabetes Sci Technol. 2025 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Although exhaled breath condensate (EBC) is a promising noninvasive sample for detecting respiratory analytes such as glucose, current EBC collection methods yield inconsistent results.

Methods: We developed a custom EBC collection device with a temperature-based algorithm to selectively condense alveolar air for reproducible EBC glucose detection. We characterized the condensate volumes and the corresponding glucose concentrations. We performed a pilot study demonstrating its use during oral glucose tolerance tests.

Results: The novel device selectively captured alveolar air resulting in slightly higher and less variable glucose concentrations than the overall EBC. Participants with type 2 diabetes demonstrated significantly higher blood plasma-EBC glucose ratios than normoglycemic participants.

Conclusions: Temperature-based selective EBC collection allows EBC glucose measurement and is a promising sampling method to distinguish patients with and without diabetes.

Keywords: exhaled breath condensate; glucose; point-of-care diagnostics; type 2 diabetes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: J.C.L. is a co-founder of OmniVis, Inc, EverTrue LLC, and Rescue Biomedical LLC, which have licensed Purdue University technology to develop point-of-care diagnostics and wearable monitoring technologies. At the time of publication, D.T. was an employee of Bristol Myers Squibb, Summit, NJ. All aspects of the study preceded and were independent of this employment. At the time of publication, K.M. was an employee of Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN. All aspects of the study preceded and were independent of this employment.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
A custom selective EBC collection device pictured with T-valve, embedded Rev. C Wind Sensor, a condensation plate with a collection frame, and a built-in wiper.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
(a) Blood to EBC glucose ratios over time for all participants in an OGTT pilot study. (b) Distribution of blood to EBC glucose ratios for normoglycemic participants (N = 2, n = 19) versus participants with type 2 diabetes (N = 2, n = 24) shown with Tukey box whisker plots depicting lower quartile, mean, and upper quartile with whiskers indicating 95% SD. Abbreviations: EBC, exhaled breath condensate; OGTT, oral glucose tolerance tests. *P < .01.
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