H. Liu, D. Li, Y. Xia, Y. Li
Abstract
From Breath Biomarkers to Clinical Validation
This review examines the clinical potential of exhaled-breath metabolomics, covering mass-spectrometry approaches, including SESI-MS, sensor technologies and machine-learning methods. Across cancer, respiratory and infectious diseases, it highlights promising disease-associated breath signatures but identifies major barriers to routine use, including sampling variability, limited external validation and uncertain biomarker specificity. The authors position breath analysis as a complement to established diagnostics and call for standardised protocols, prospective multicentre studies and clinically interpretable models.