July 18, 2001
The Ottowa Citizen
Janet Hunter
In a doctor's office in the not-too-distant future, the same laser that's in a CD player and a puff of breath will be used to immediately diagnose schizophrenia and a host of other diseases.
When it has done that, the machine will help the physician know how much of a drug to prescribe to treat the disease.
Technology developed by Patrick McCann, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Oklahoma, uses lasers to measure the amount of a molecule -- carbon disulphide in the case of schizophrenia -- that is known to be present in the breath of people with that particular disease. "Every molecule has a unique fingerprint and by using the laser, we can probe that fingerprint, identify which molecules are there and how many of them are in that sample," Mr. McCann said.
While a breathalyser diagnostic test already exists for asthma, Mr. McCann, president and CEO of the machine's commercial developer, Ekips Technologies, says his invention is superior: It's inexpensive, fast, easy and non-invasive.
The established asthma breathalyser test, for example, uses hazardous gases, requires steroids to be taken and can't be carried out on children younger than five. Asthma, which is marked by an increase in the amount of nitrous oxide in the breath, is the first disease Mr. McCann was able to diagnose with the machine, within the past two months.
He says since his machine doesn't require massive amounts of breath, even infants can be tested with it.Clinical trials will continue when the first commercial machine is installed in a private medical clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by the end of the year. Each test is expected to cost between $10 and $20 U.S.Mr. McCann envisions a world where the machine, which is small enough to sit on a tabletop, will be in every doctor's office, clinic and hospital, and will be used routinely to test for a dozen or so diseases.
Tests for lung cancer, breast cancer, renal function, Type 2 diabetes, the monitoring of liver function and drug toxicity are among the technology's other expected applications.
Mr. McCann is particularly interested in using the machine to diagnose schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.Researchers in Scotland and New York have independently demonstrated that people with schizophrenia have higher levels of carbon disulphide in their breath than those without the disease, Mr. McCann said."If it's real, and we intend to show that it is real using our technology, it will be the first biomarker measure that's associated with a mental illness," he said."
It really will show that schizophrenia is not something that's just in the patient's head, there really is a chemical imbalance, and that's what's causing their hallucinations, that's what's causing their mental health problems.
"Since the machine measures the amount of the particular molecule in the breath, repeat tests can easily show whether the drug administered to treat the disease is working."We're talking about individualized medicine," Mr. McCann said. "You could use the breath test to monitor the effectiveness of drug treatment and, say if the CS2 level goes down, then you know that drug is doing something to solve the problem, rather than just cover it up.
"Earlier research results have been presented at scientific conferences, and Mr. McCann intends to submit the asthma diagnosis test to the journal Optics Letters. Mr. McCann, who did PhD research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been studying laser diagnostics for 15 years.
Ekips has been spending about $500,000 a year on the machine, a figure that will increase dramatically once the machine goes into production.The company received money from a private venture capital firm in Oklahoma, and from the U.S. Air Force, which is interested in using the technology to measure pollution and air quality.
URL: http://www.schizophrenia.com/newsletter/allnews/breathtest.html
Copyright 2001 Southam Inc.
