Cold induced pain elicits reproducible breath metabolomic responses across geographically distinct populations
= 21 in China) underwent four breath measurements: two pre- and two post-CPT intervention. Mass spectral data revealed a reproducible and rapid metabolic shift, with over 400 upregulated features consistently observed across both cohorts. Pathway enrichment and correlation analyses implicated amino acid metabolism (e.g., glutamate, arginine, and threonine) and stress-related pathways (e.g., creatine, butanoate, and citric acid cycle intermediates). A neural network classifier distinguished pre-vs. post-CPT states (AUC = 0.856, 78% accuracy). Our findings support real-time breath analysis as a non-invasive method for detecting short-term physiological responses.
Authors
- Kapil Dev Singh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5682-0708)
- Dilan Sezer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4751-8387)
- Urs Frey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4026-1259)
- Jens Gaab (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9194-8491)
- Mélina Richard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4432-7905)
- Pablo Sinues (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5602-2880)
- Zhifeng Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5591-8175)
- Philippe Claude Cattin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8785-2713)
- Sarah Buergler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5377-7505)
- Xue Li
- Luana Palermo
- Yannick Schulz
- Xin Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7577-8741)
Institutions
- University of Bern (CH)
- Jinan University (CN)
- University of Basel (CH)
- University Children’s Hospital Basel (CH)
Publication Details
- Journal
- iScience
- Published
- 2026-04-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.115857
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Chemical Sensor Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Guangdong Science and Technology Department
- Fondation Botnar