Volatile Organic Metabolites Identify Patients with Breast Cancer, Cyclomastopathy, and Mammary Gland Fibroma

The association between cancer and volatile organic metabolites in exhaled breaths has attracted increasing attention from researchers. The present study reports on a systematic study of gas profiles of metabolites in human exhaled breath by pattern recognition methods. Exhaled breath was collected from 85 patients with histologically confirmed breast disease (including 39 individuals with infiltrating ductal carcinoma, 25 individuals with cyclomastopathy and from 21 individuals with mammary gland fibroma) and 45 healthy volunteers. Principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis were used to process the final data. The volatile organic metabolites exhibited significant differences between breast cancer and normal controls, breast cancer and cyclomastopathy, and breast cancer and mammary gland fibroma; 21, 6, and 8 characteristic metabolites played decisive roles in sample classification, respectively (P < 0.05). Three volatile organic metabolites in the exhaled air, 2,5,6-trimethyloctane, 1,4-dimethoxy-2,3-butanediol, and cyclohexanone, distinguished breast cancer patients from healthy individuals, mammary gland fibroma patients, and patients with cyclomastopathy (P < 0.05). The identified three volatile organic metabolites associated with breast cancer may serve as novel diagnostic biomarkers.