Johns Hopkins University researchers are working on a novel method of testing exhaled breath to detect infection rapidly after potential exposure to a biological warfare agent.

“This device is designed to aid first responders in the event of a suspected biological weapon release,” says Nate Boggs, a JHU associate research scientist.

The portable device could be carried by firefighters, police and EMTs to a suspected biological weapons release. It sets up quickly and requires little maintenance. The idea is to provide a tool that can help first responders with on-site triage and help in hospital emergency departments, so people exposed to biological agents can get rapid treatment.

When exposed to disease-causing organisms, cells in the body release cytokines, proteins that help the immune system identify and fight the infection. The researchers theorize that cytokines might eventually be exhaled through water vapor in the breath, and could be captured by the new detector.

“Old medical texts, in the days long before sophisticated diagnostics, would recommend that a doctor check a patient by checking his or her breath, so we knew there must be something to it,” says researcher Joany Jackman.

The work so far has proved the concept that cytokines are at or below the limit of detection in the exhaled breath of a normal, uninfected population. The sample population in this case was piglets at a commercial hog farm, where the piglets were constantly exposed to a range of normal environmental bacteria and pollen.

“If these proteins are not present in the uninfected population, their presence may indicate some form of disease,” Boggs says. He explains that the detector would assist first responders in four ways.

One, it would allow them to screen infected individuals from those who weren’t contaminated, allowing the responders to focus on those actually in need of medical attention.

Two, it would make the screening process simpler and non-invasive. “It’s easier to sample breath from many people very quickly than it is to draw blood,” notes Jackman.

Three, it would make the diagnostic process faster. Results could be available in minutes, and the more quickly treatment begins, the better the patients’ chances of survival.

Four, this technique could provide a pre-symptomatic diagnosis of infection. Cytokines could be detected in the breath long before physical symptoms were present.

Boggs says the researchers are currently working on human-use protocols at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where they hope to show some of the same trends in humans. “We would also like to show these cytokines in infected samples, even finding different cytokines for different diseases. This would make our tool even more robust, as we could discriminate between a range of bacteria, viruses and toxins.”