Examination of Exhaled Breath Condensate in Patients with Asthma and Chronic ObstructivePulmonary Diseases

Overview

Considerable interest of specialists all over the world has focused on the measurement of the markers of inflammationand oxidative stress in the exhaled breath condensate in patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonarydiseases recently. Use of exhaled condensate is based on the hypothesis that aerosol particles exhaled in humanbreath reflect the composition of the bronchoalveolar extracellular lining fluid. The standard collection of the materialrequires condensation of exhaled air and the samples have to be kept in biologically inert containers. Measurementof the very low concentrations of selected substances requires very sensitive analytical methods. The examinationof exhaled breath condensate is absolutely non-invasive method, which can be repeated as often as needed and it isextremely well tolerated both by children and seniors. Markers in the condensate enable detection and quantificationof the inflammation process, the disease monitoring, and assessment of the response to the treatment. The breathcondensate diagnostics is a new progressive method and in the patients with asthma and chronic obstructivepulmonary disease it can bring complementary information to the very sensitive method of determination of exhalednitric oxide

Key words:
exhaled breath condensate, inflammatory markers, asthma.