Metabolomic differences of exhaled breath condensate among children with and without asthma

Ju Chang-Chien, Hsin Yi Huang, Hui Ju Tsai, Chi Jen Lo, Wan Chen Lin, Yu Lun Tseng, Shih Ling Wang, Hung Yao Ho, Mei Ling Cheng*, Tsung Chieh Yao*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: There remains an unmet need in objective tests for diagnosing asthma in children. The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of metabolomic profiles of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) to discriminate stable asthma in Asian children in the community. Methods: One hundred and sixty-five Asian children (92 stable asthma and 73 non-asthmatic controls) participating in a population-based cohort were enrolled and divided into training and validation sets. Nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabolomic profiles of EBC samples were analyzed by using orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis. Results: EBC metabolomic signature (lactate, formate, butyrate, and isobutyrate) had an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.826 in discriminating children with and without asthma in the training set, which significantly outperformed FeNO (AUC = 0.574; P <.001) and FEV1/FVC % predicted (AUC = 0.569; P <.001). The AUC for EBC metabolomic signature was 0.745 in the validation set, which was slightly but not significantly lower than in the testing set (P =.282). We further extrapolated two potentially involved metabolic pathways, including pyruvate (P = 1.67 × 10−3; impact: 0.14) and methane (P = 1.89 × 10−3; impact: 0.15), as the most likely divergent metabolisms between children with and without asthma. Conclusion: This study provided evidence supporting the role of EBC metabolomic signature to discriminate stable asthma in Asian children in the community, with a discriminative property outperforming conventional clinical tests such as FeNO or spirometry.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)264-272
Number of pages9
JournalPediatric Allergy and Immunology
Volume32
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 02 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Keywords

  • asthma
  • butyrate
  • diagnosis
  • exhaled breath condensate
  • formate
  • isobutyrate
  • lactate
  • metabolomics

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