Volatile organic compounds from feces and their potential for diagnosis of gastrointestinal disease

Abstract

Little is known about the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in feces and their potential health consequences. Patients and healthcare professionals have observed that feces often smell abnormal during gastrointestinal disease. The aim of this work was to define the volatiles emitted from the feces of healthy donors and patients with gastrointestinal disease. Our hypotheses were that i) VOCs would be shared in health; ii) VOCs would be constant in individuals; and iii) specific changes in VOCs would occur in disease. Volatile emissions in health were defined in a cohort and a longitudinal study. Subsequently, the pattern of volatiles found in the cohort study were compared to that found from patients with ulcerative colitis, Campylobacter jejuni, and Clostridium difficile. Volatiles from feces were collected by solid-phase microextraction and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. In the cohort study, 297 volatiles were identified. In all samples, ethanoic, butanoic, pentanoic acids, benzaldehyde, ethanal, carbon disulfide, dimethyldisulfide, acetone, 2-butanone, 2,3-butanedione, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, indole, and 4-methylphenol were found. Forty-four compounds were shared by 80% of subjects. In the longitudinal study, 292 volatiles were identified, with some inter and intra subject variations in VOC concentrations with time. When compared to healthy donors, volatile patterns from feces of patients with ulcerative colitis, C. difficile, and C. jejuni were each significantly different. These findings could lead the way to the development of a rapid diagnostic device based on VOC detection.

Temporal variation selects for diet–microbe co-metabolic traits in the gut of Gorilla spp

“…Indeed, all metabolites enriched in the mountain gorilla metabolome, and in lowland gorillas during the low ripe fruit season (that is, butanoic, propanoic, benzoic and fumaric acids as well as galactopyranosides) can be derived from microbial metabolism on plant cell walls (Pena et al, 2004;Garner et al, 2007). Moreover, we present evidence that the abundance of these metabolites and other components of the lignified portion of plant cell walls, such as caffeic, azelaic, quinic and adipic acid (Moco et al, 2012;Chung, 1997), co-vary along with the abundance of taxa related to unclassified Bacteroidales and Porphyromonadaceae, which could potentially be playing a fibrolytic role in the gut microbiome of mountain gorillas and the lowland species during the low ripe fruit season.…”

Application of Fecal Volatile Organic Compound Analysis in Clinical Practice: Current State and Future Perspectives

“…Most studies on application of fecal VOC analysis in infectious disease have focused on Clostridium difficile [19][20][21][22][23]. Other studies include detection of Campylobacter jejuni, cholera, giardiasis and rotavirus [21,[23][24][25][26].…”

“…In addition, three other studies demonstrated that, by means of GC-MS, C. difficile positive fecal samples could be distinguished from controls based on their VOC profiles. Specific VOCs, sensitivity and specificity are listed in Table 2 [19,21,23].…”

“…Therefore, Berkhout et al aimed to evaluate the potential of fecal VOC by means of eNose (Cyranose 320 ® ) as early non-invasive biomarker for BPD [13]. Fecal VOC profiles were identified at four different time points (7,14,21, and 28 days postnatally) of 15 preterm infants with severe BPD and 15 matched healthy controls. Discrimination of preterm infants with severe BPD from healthy controls was feasible at 14, 21, and 28 days (Table 4).…”

Familial colorectal cancer screening: When and what to do?

“…Volatile organic compounds are gaseous carbon-based chemicals derived from biochemical metabolism in the body, and in the bowel they are mainly produced by the intestinal microbiota and excreted by the feces [82] . Electronic nose has already been proposed as a potential noninvasive diagnostic biomarker test for lung cancer, breast cancer and malignant melanoma [83,84] , and recently [85] , it was shown to discriminate healthy subjects from patients with CRC (sensitivity and specificity: 85% and 87%, respectively) and patients with ADA (sensitivity and specificity: 62% and 86%, respectively).…”