LATE-BREAKING ABSTRACT: Exploiting the ability of 1H-NMR to differentiate patients with severe alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency from controls based on metabolome profiling of exhaled breath condensate

There is a pressing need to identify biomarkers that are useful to monitor effects of expensive treatments such as i.v. alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT) augmentation. We applied Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to single , blinded samples of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) from 11 patients with moderate to severe emphysema and PiZZ- AAT deficiency and 11 spouse healthy controls. The spectral metabolomics profiles showed the presence of 20 to 25 metabolites such as propionic acid, acetate, butyrate, benzoate, butanediol, fatty acid, alanine, acetone, acetoin, ethanol, lactate and methanol which were common to both groups. However, the difference in the level of metabolites (4 to 300 fold, p PLS-DA analysis: 2D scores plot between the selected PCs.