Correlations between blood glucose and breath components from portable gas sensors and PTR-TOF-MS

Acetone is one of the most abundant volatile compounds in the human breath and might be important for monitoring diabetic patients. Here, a portable acetone sensor consisting of flame-made, nanostructured, Si-doped WO3 sensing films was used to analyse the end tidal fraction of the breath (collected in Tedlar bags) from eight healthy volunteers after overnight fasting (morning) and after lunch (afternoon). After breath sampling, the gaseous components were also analysed by proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-TOF-MS), and each person's blood glucose level was measured. The portable sensor accurately detected the presence of acetone with fast response/recovery times (<12 s) and a high signal-to-noise ratio. Statistical analysis of the relationship between the PTR-TOF-MS measurements of breath gases (e.g., acetone, isoprene, ethanol and methanol), sensor response and the blood glucose level was performed for both sampling periods. The best correlations were found after overnight fasting (morning): in particular, between blood glucose level and breath acetone (Pearson's 0.98 and Spearman's 0.93). Whereas the portable sensor response correlated best with the blood glucose (Pearson's 0.96 and Spearman's 0.81) and breath acetone (Pearson's 0.92 and Spearman's 0.69).