New Hope for a Serious
Disease
Asthma, the number one chronic disease affecting children, is characterized by chronic airway inflammation and airway hyper-responsiveness. Recent medical research has shown that measuring certain biomarkers in exhaled breath, including exhaled nitric oxide (eNO), can provide information about the current status of patient airways allowing more effective use of asthma medications such as anti-inflammatory inhaled corticosteroids.
Ekips Advances eNO Detection
Technology
The Ekips Breathmeter has advantages over other exhaled biomarker measurement technologies because it can detect multiple molecules in the same laser scan, and this enables internal calibration of biomarker concentrations for each measured breath sample. For example, both NO and CO2 have absorption lines near each other in the 5.2 micron spectral region, and this allows reliable determination of eNO concentrations based upon the measured absorption signal for CO2. This self calibrating feature promises to make breath analysis less costly and more reliable for asthma diagnosis, therapy monitoring, and new drug discovery. Our vision is that laser-based breath analysis will become as routine for managing asthma as blood sugar tests are for managing diabetes.
Asthma, the number one chronic disease affecting children, is characterized by chronic airway inflammation and airway hyper-responsiveness. Recent medical research has shown that measuring certain biomarkers in exhaled breath, including exhaled nitric oxide (eNO), can provide information about the current status of patient airways allowing more effective use of asthma medications such as anti-inflammatory inhaled corticosteroids.
The Ekips Breathmeter has advantages over other exhaled biomarker measurement technologies because it can detect multiple molecules in the same laser scan, and this enables internal calibration of biomarker concentrations for each measured breath sample. For example, both NO and CO2 have absorption lines near each other in the 5.2 micron spectral region, and this allows reliable determination of eNO concentrations based upon the measured absorption signal for CO2. This self calibrating feature promises to make breath analysis less costly and more reliable for asthma diagnosis, therapy monitoring, and new drug discovery. Our vision is that laser-based breath analysis will become as routine for managing asthma as blood sugar tests are for managing diabetes.
