New Breath Diagnostics for Fungal Disease

Diagnosis of fungal disease etiology is often difficult, compounded by inaccurate or delayed diagnostic methods. Breath-based biomarkers are being investigated as a novel target for clinical diagnostics. This review aims to summarize recent advancements, identify gaps, and discuss future research directions for breath-based fungal diagnostics.

Studies conducted in vitro, in animal models, and in human breath show fungi produce a large and diverse volatile metabolome. Recent studies on Aspergillus, Candida, Rhizopus, Coccidioides, Trichoderma, Fusarium, and Alternaria demonstrate the feasibility of identifying infectious etiology using fungal volatile profiles. However, the majority of data on fungal volatiles come from in vitro analyses, which have limited translatability to in vivo infections; thus, future studies should focus on in vivo volatile profiles to develop breath tests for diagnosing infections and monitoring antifungal therapy.

This review describes recent studies that examine volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as biomarkers to detect and differentiate pathogenic fungi, highlighting the feasibility of breath-based diagnostics for fungal disease.