Exhaled breath condensate analysis in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

The increasing focus on airway inflammation in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has led to development and evolution of tools to measure it. Direct assessment of airway inflammation requires invasive procedures, and hence, has obvious limitations. Non-invasive methods to sample airway secretions and fluids offer exciting prospects. Analysis of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) is rapidly emerging as a novel non-invasive approach for sampling airway epithelial lining fluid and offers a convenient tool to provide biomarkers of inflammation. It has definite advantages that make it an attractive and a feasible option. It is a source of mediators and molecules that are the causes or consequences of the inflammatory process. Measurement of such markers is increasingly being explored for studying airway inflammation qualitatively and quantitatively in research studies and for potential clinical applications. These biomarkers also have the potential to develop into powerful research tools in COPD for identifying various pathways of pathogenesis of COPD that may ultimately provide specific targets for therapeutic intervention. The EBC analysis is still an evolving noninvasive method for monitoring of inflammation and oxidative stress in the airways. The limited number of studies available on EBC analysis in COPD have provided useful information although definite clinical uses are yet to be defined. Evolving technologies of genomics, proteomics, and metabonomics may provide deeper and newer insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of COPD.