R. Bourgeois, K. Rohrbach, Y. Baumann, N. Perkins, E. Seidl, S. Micic, A. Moeller

Remote Breath Profiling of Preschool Asthma Using SESI-HRMS
This pioneering study demonstrates that SESI-HRMS combined with offline Nalophan-based breath collection can detect asthma-specific VOC markers in preschool children (ages 3–6). Out of 375 previously identified asthma-specific m/z features, 125 were re-detected, with 16 showing statistically significant differences between symptomatic patients and healthy controls. Several markers mapped to known metabolic pathways, and classification performance (AUC 0.77) confirms diagnostic potential. This is the first validation of SESI-based asthma diagnostics in young children using a remote, non-invasive method—a promising step toward early, accurate respiratory disease detection.

R Weber, B Streckenbach, J Kaeslin, L Welti, D Inci, N Perkins, R Zenobi, S Micic, A Möller.
We hypothesized that the breath of children with allergic asthma contains a unique signature of disease specific metabolites. Using secondary electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (SESI-HRMS), we aimed to identify relevant VOCs to assess underlying interconnections between biomarkers belonging to common metabolic pathways in the pathophysiology of asthma.