to Identify a signature for respiratory Covid-19 would lead to a system of detection, of type “breathalyzer test, with a green and red light”.
researchers at the CNRS will consider on Friday in the “good way” to achieve to detect the Covid-19 in the expired air of a sick person, by analyzing the chemical composition of its breath.
“We are rather confident to be on the right track”, said to AFP, Christian George, assistant director of the Institute of research on catalysis and environment of Lyon (Ircelyon). “There are still two months, we knew little about this disease, and there, you start to have information that indicate almost day-to-day”, he noted.
Since June, a team of researchers, based at the hospital of the Croix-Rousse in Lyon, compared the expirations of “a few tens” of patients Covid-19 and healthy subjects, thanks to a large device with a long flexible tube, called a mass spectrometer.
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“When a person blows into the device, record the chemical composition of the exhaled air,” said Christian George, stating that each breath contained “30 000 information/second”. “What we’re doing, this is a statistical treatment to see what are the information that differs from patients (with Covid-19, editor’s note) of healthy people”, he continued.
“The first calculations have shown that we can separate patients from healthy people”, he said happily with caution, recalling that “in a research project, everything can go through up to the last moment”.
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Designing a detection system is very simple type of “breathalyzer test”
the remains of the steps. As the realization of a “chemical speciation” to determine the volatile compounds typical of the Covid-19, a kind of “signature” of its own that is reflected in the breath.
“We are still very cautious, because there is now a need to ensure that what we observe is specific to the Covid and other respiratory diseases have a signature distinct,” explained the researcher.
to Identify the signature of the Covid-19 would lead to a system of detection very simple, such as “breathalyzer test, with a green and red light”, while “the machine that we use today is expensive and complicated to use,” said Christian George.
This complexity makes it a tool that is poorly adapted to the hospital environment, according to the researcher. However, in the event of a “second crisis (epidemic) in the fall”, “it is not impossible that we may be (…) ready to make a first sorting (between the sick and non-sick) to the arrival of the hospital,” he advanced.
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“Covid-19”, the new coronavirus
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According to him, this method of detection by the breath could even mark the “beginning” of a “new era of medical diagnostics”, and be extended to other respiratory diseases
