Owlstone Medical Publishes Exciting Liver Data on the use of an EVOC® Probe for the Early Detection of Cirrhosis
Description
Published on: 9 Nov 2023, under Science & Research
- Results show the potential of a Breath Biopsy® test for the early detection of liver cirrhosis suitable for use in primary care settings
Cambridge, UK, November 9, 2023: Owlstone Medical (“Owlstone”), the global leader in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, today announced the results of a peer-reviewed study in the journal Biomedicines – ‘Exogenous Volatile Organic Compound (EVOC®) Breath Testing Maximizes Classification Performance for Subjects with Cirrhosis and Reveals Signs of Portal Hypertension1. The results presented show the potential of Breath Biopsy for the early detection of liver cirrhosis in primary care
The study, in the Biomedicines Special Issue “New Challenges in the Study of Liver Diseases: From Molecular Pathogenesis to Therapeutic Approaches 2.0”, enrolled 29 ultrasound-confirmed cirrhosis cases and 29 healthy controls to assess the performance of Owlstone’s EVOC limonene breath test in cirrhosis detection.
Limonene is a safe chemical used in food manufacture and ingested mainly through the diet that accumulates in the liver, with a small fraction excreted in the breath following elevated exposure. In the study, all subjects showed a >100-fold limonene spike in breath after administration of the limonene EVOC probe, with significantly higher bioavailability seen in the cirrhosis group. Optimal test performance for the detection of cirrhosis was seen at 60 minutes post administration (83% sensitivity, 90% specificity, 89% PPV, 84% NPV, 0.91 AUC), a performance that suggests it has utility for screening.
Owlstone is developing non-invasive, easy to use, breath tests for liver disease, including for the early detection of cirrhosis. This test is planned to be used in primary care to screen individuals considered at high risk of having liver cirrhosis, with administration of the EVOC probe and collection of the sample to be performed in-clinic and the sample analyzed in a Breath Biopsy laboratory. Individuals with a positive test would then be expected to undergo further clinical diagnostic testing in line with the current clinical care pathway for formal diagnosis.
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “Compared to current approaches for cirrhosis detection available in primary care, Breath Biopsy offers several advantages. Breath collection is simple which enables it to be collected without the need for significant capital investment or specialist training. Further, the breath test in the study out-performs existing blood-based tests, and is non-invasive and cost-effective. Given the simplicity of Breath Biopsy, this published study demonstrates, for the first time, the potential of breath analysis as the basis of a non-invasive screening test that can be implemented in primary care to enable the early detection of cirrhosis with high sensitivity and specificity.”
