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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16356 |
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| _version_ | 1866910224755982336 |
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| author | Ritwik, Amio Pronoy Das Mansur, Yamin Ma, Jingcheng |
| author_facet | Ritwik, Amio Pronoy Das Mansur, Yamin Ma, Jingcheng |
| contents | Exhaled breath condensate (EBC) contains volatile metabolites and is promising for non-invasive disease diagnosis, but after decades of research spanning over 100 biomarkers and 10 diseases, no EBC-based test has reached clinical use. The measurement variability that can span orders of magnitude, far exceeding the clinically required 10%, has long been attributed to biological factors. Here, we reveal a fundamentally different origin: the collected microdroplets themselves fail to retain volatile biomarkers. By isolating volatile co-condensation and transient evaporation from biological interference, we show that EBC microdroplets smaller than 100 μm lose clinically significant volatile content within a single breath cycle. This challenges the implicit assumption underlying decades of EBC research, that condensate faithfully reflects airway lining fluid. We develop and validate a physics-based model that predicts this loss across disease-relevant biomarkers and establishes the conditions for reliable EBC sampling. This work reframes EBC variability as a solvable engineering problem rather than an inherent biological limitation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_16356 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Microdroplets Fail to Retain Exhaled Volatile Biomarkers within a Single Breath Ritwik, Amio Pronoy Das Mansur, Yamin Ma, Jingcheng Quantitative Methods Medical Physics Exhaled breath condensate (EBC) contains volatile metabolites and is promising for non-invasive disease diagnosis, but after decades of research spanning over 100 biomarkers and 10 diseases, no EBC-based test has reached clinical use. The measurement variability that can span orders of magnitude, far exceeding the clinically required 10%, has long been attributed to biological factors. Here, we reveal a fundamentally different origin: the collected microdroplets themselves fail to retain volatile biomarkers. By isolating volatile co-condensation and transient evaporation from biological interference, we show that EBC microdroplets smaller than 100 μm lose clinically significant volatile content within a single breath cycle. This challenges the implicit assumption underlying decades of EBC research, that condensate faithfully reflects airway lining fluid. We develop and validate a physics-based model that predicts this loss across disease-relevant biomarkers and establishes the conditions for reliable EBC sampling. This work reframes EBC variability as a solvable engineering problem rather than an inherent biological limitation. |
| title | Microdroplets Fail to Retain Exhaled Volatile Biomarkers within a Single Breath |
| topic | Quantitative Methods Medical Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16356 |