on the horizon
By Megan Roth
Pandemic Pushes Technology Ohio State research provides test results in seconds
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The breath test technology tracking the chemicals found in the breath to identify potential diseases.
Dr. Matthew Exline, lead researcher in the COVID-19 breath test study. 38
able to design an approach using patients already confirmed to have COVID-19. “When we first started the trial, there was a lot of concern about COVID research since this was before the vaccine,” says Dr. Matthew Exline, the lead researcher and a professor of internal medicine at OSU. “So we needed a situation that was controlled so that our research workers weren’t putting themselves in jeopardy.” The ICU gave researchers an ideal test subject population. “Obviously, by the time someone gets into the ICU, we already kind of know they have COVID,” says Exline. “The ultimate use of this technology would have broader applications.” The research team found a distinguishable pattern detected in test results from 16 of the 18 COVID-19 patients and in only a handful of the non-COVID-19 patients. That pattern disappeared as patients cleared the virus. www.healthynewalbanymagazine.com
Photos courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
fter two years of nasal swab and spit tests, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center has developed a unique technology to rapidly identify COVID-19: a breath test. Not only is the test less invasive than swabs, but potentially more accurate than PCR or rapid tests. This unprecedented method of identifying COVID-19 provides results in seconds by using nanosensors to identify and measure specific biomarkers found in the breath. Dr. Pelagia-Irene Gouma had been developing a breathalyzer technology to detect influenza in patients, but with the onset of the pandemic, she recognized the impact her research could have for identifying the COVID-19 virus, too. The first step was to conduct research affirming the technology’s effectiveness in detecting COVID-19. Though initially difficult to study due to concerns of spreading the virus, researchers were
