Exhaled breath analysis is a method in medicine for gaining information on the clinical state of an individual by monitoring the components present in the exhaled breath.
It is a non-invasive method and breath samples can be extracted as often as desired.
[1] Identification and quantification of potential disease biomarkers can be seen as the driving force for the analysis of exhaled breath.
[2] Moreover, future applications for medical diagnosis and therapy control with dynamic assessments of normal physiological function or pharmacodynamics are intended.
[3] This is a relatively new field that holds great promise for direct diagnostics of pathogens, such as Influenza, and for in-vivo monitoring of the respiratory lining fluid (Respiratory epithelium) components, such as proteins and phospholipids.