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Updated: Sep 27, 2026

Breath Collection from Children for Disease Biomarker Discovery
Published on: February 14, 2019
Hydrogen breath test as an indicator of the quality of colonic preparation for colonoscopy
Yoshihisa Urita1, Kazuo Hike, Naotaka Torii
1First Department of Internal Medicine, Toho University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
Background:
Breath hydrogen levels after ingestion of polyethylene glycol were evaluated as a method of predicting the quality of colonic preparation.
Methods:
One hundred patients undergoing nonemergency colonoscopy were recruited for this study. After fasting overnight, they were instructed to ingest a polyethylene glycol solution containing 12 g lactulose at a rate of 50 mL every 5 minutes for 2 hours. During ingestion of the polyethylene glycol solution, breath samples were taken at 15-minute intervals for 240 minutes and breath hydrogen concentration was measured.
Results:
The preparation for colonoscopy was judged to be poor in 18% and adequate in 82%. The breath hydrogen levels over 90 minutes were significantly higher in the poor group than in the adequate group. In all patients with a breath hydrogen level less than 10 parts per million at 240 minutes, the preparation was adequate. Conversely, all patients with a poor preparation had a breath hydrogen level of more than 10 ppm at 240 minutes.
Conclusions:
The hydrogen breath test effectively predicts adequacy of colonic preparation.
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