A person's exhaled breath – which provides information that could unveil diverse health insights – has been hard to analyze. Now, a novel "smart mask" provides real-time, non-invasive monitoring of what people exhale. The mask, dubbed EBCare, captures and analyzes exhaled breath condensate (EBC), and it offers a promising solution for continuous EBC analysis at an affordable cost.
"The significance of EBCare lies in its role as a versatile, convenient, efficient, real-time research platform and solution in various medical domains, providing a robust and effective tool for this kind of future advancing clinical and medical studies," write the authors. Recent respiratory outbreaks like COVID-19 have highlighted the need for more comprehensive methods for tracking respiratory diseases. Our breath contains myriad molecular markers – from volatile organic compounds and inorganic substances to cytokines and pathogens – exhaled as gases, aerosols, or droplets.
While analyzing these breath biomarkers in real-time could greatly improve the diagnoses, monitoring, and management of various respiratory and metabolic health conditions, current tools for studying EBC are severely lacking. Here, Wenzheng Heng and colleagues introduce a wearable, mechanically soft microfluidic smart mask system, designed for continuous, non-invasive analysis of EBC. Unlike traditional bulky devices that need external refrigeration to condense breath vapor, EBCare uses tandem passive cooling technolog.