title: Point of care monitoring of hemodialysis patients with a breath ammonia measurement device based on printed polyaniline nanoparticle sensors.
abstract: A device for measuring human breath ammonia was developed based on a single use, disposable, inkjet printed ammonia sensor fabricated using polyaniline nanoparticles. The device was optimized for sampling ammonia in human breath samples by addressing issues such as variations in breath sample volume, flow rate, sources of oral ammonia, temperature and humidity. The resulting system was capable of measuring ammonia in breath from 40 to 2993 ppbv (r(2 )= 0.99, n = 3) as correlated with photoacoustic laser spectroscopy and correlation in normal human breath samples yielded a slope of 0.93 and a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.9705 (p < 0.05, n = 11). Measurement of ammonia in the breath of patients with end-stage kidney disease demonstrated its significant reduction following dialysis, while also correlating well with blood urea nitrogen (BUN) (r = 0.61, p < 0.01, n = 96). Excellent intraindividual correlations were demonstrated between breath ammonia and BUN (0.86 to 0.96), which demonstrates the possibility of using low cost point of care breath ammonia systems as a noninvasive means of monitoring kidney dysfunction and treatment.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, Dublin City University , Dublin D9, Ireland.
authors.forename: Troy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hibbard
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Crowley
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ward
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Holian
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Anthony J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Killard
mesh_terms: D000641:Ammonia / Q000032:analysis*; D000814:Aniline Compounds / Q000737:chemistry*; D001944:Breath Tests / Q000295:instrumentation*; D002138:Calibration; D006801:Humans; D053758:Nanoparticles; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D011327:Printing; D006435:Renal Dialysis
chemical_list: D000814:Aniline Compounds; C416807:polyaniline; D000641:Ammonia