title: Detection of volatile organic compounds in Brucella abortus-seropositive bison.
abstract: Brucellosis is of great public health and economic importance worldwide. Detection of brucellosis currently relies on serologic testing of an antibody response to Brucella infection, which suffers from cross-sensitivities to other antibody responses. Here we present a new method for identifying Brucella exposure that is based on profiling volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. Breath samples from Brucella-seropositive bison and controls were chemically analyzed and demonstrated statistically significant differences in the concentration profiles of five VOCs. A point-of-care device incorporating an array of nanomaterial-based sensors could identify VOC patterns indicative of Brucella exposure with excellent discriminative power, using a statistical algorithm. We show that the patterns were not affected by the animals' environment and that the discriminative power of the approach was stable over time. The Brucella-indicative VOCs and collective patterns that were identified in this pilot study could lead to the development of a novel diagnostic screening test for quickly detecting infected animals chute-side, pen-side, or even remotely in populations of free-ranging ungulates. The promising preliminary results presented encourage subsequent larger scale trials in order to further evaluate the proposed method.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Chemical Engineering and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology , Haifa 3200003, Israel.
authors.forename: Alona
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bayn
authors.forename: Pauline
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nol
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Tisch
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rhyan
authors.forename: Christine K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.forename: Hossam
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Haick
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial / Q000276:immunology; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D016164:Bison / Q000382:microbiology*; D001944:Breath Tests / Q000379:methods*; D002003:Brucella abortus / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D002006:Brucellosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000635:transmission / Q000662:veterinary; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry; D012698:Serologic Tests / Q000662:veterinary*; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds