{"id":380037,"date":"2026-04-07T19:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380037\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T19:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:12:08","slug":"a-breath-test-reveals-infections-deep-inside-tissues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380037\/","title":{"rendered":"A breath test reveals infections deep inside tissues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diagnosing bacterial infections deep inside your tissues can be highly invasive, requiring procedures such as tissue biopsies or blood cultures. Now researchers have made strides toward solving this issue. They report a method that can detect bacterial infections on the breath<\/a> of mice, even when the bacteria are deep inside their bodies (ACS Cent. Sci. 2026, DOI: 10.1021\/acscentsci.5c01995).<\/p>\n

Doctors already use breath tests to detect certain stomach infections<\/a>. Their patients simply swallow urea labeled with carbon-13, and if an infection is present, the bacteria break down the urea into labeled carbon dioxide. Doctors then measure the 13CO2 in patients\u2019 exhalations.<\/p>\n

But because the urea is delivered orally, this approach is limited to the stomach. Once the labeled molecules move farther into the digestive tract, gut microbes break them down, and they cannot reveal infections elsewhere in the body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe eureka moment came when we heard that 13C-enriched metabolites were being used to study cancer,\u201d says David Wilson<\/a>, an imaging scientist and radiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. \u201cApplying the same idea to bacteria seemed pretty straightforward.\u201d Wilson\u2019s team figured they could inject sugars labeled with carbon-13 into the bloodstream; the sugars would eventually find their way to the infection site deep inside tissues and turn into detectable 13CO2.<\/p>\n

To identify suitable probes, the researchers first screened a panel of 13C-labeled sugars in bacterial cultures, finding that compounds such as maltose and mannitol were metabolized to produce 13CO2. The team then moved to mouse models of muscle, bloodstream, bone, and lung infection.<\/p>\n

The researchers placed the mice in tiny breathing chambers that could collect and analyze the gases that the rodents exhaled. Using nondispersive infrared spectroscopy, the scientists were able to detect clear 13CO2 signals on the infected animals\u2019 breath within minutes. Healthy controls showed little to no 13CO2.<\/p>\n

The signal also tracked the mice\u2019s response to antibiotics. In mice with muscle infections, exhaled 13CO2 levels dropped after 24 h of treatment as bacterial levels fell about 100,000-fold.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study addresses a genuinely important diagnostic gap,\u201d says Mathias W. Pletz<\/a>, an infectious disease specialist at Jena University Hospital who was not involved in the study. He says the most compelling aspect is its potential specificity for active bacterial metabolism. In pneumonia, doctors often start antibiotics without knowing whether bacteria or viruses are responsible. \u201cA negative breath test could be a meaningful step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willem van Schaik<\/a>, a microbiologist at the University of Birmingham who was not involved in the study either, calls the work \u201can exciting innovation with strong proof-of-principle data\u201d but says several hurdles remain before clinical translation. \u201cBacterial levels in human infections are often lower than those in animal models, leaving the sensitivity of this approach in patients an open question,\u201d van Schaik notes, adding that 13C-labeled sugars are currently expensive.<\/p>\n

Though, Wilson says, a more refined version could complement imaging in acute care settings, such as positron emission tomography (PET), which is costly in its own right and logistically cumbersome. The breath test seemed to mirror PET signals when Wilson\u2019s team compared the two methods.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, it\u2019s greatest strength might lie in quickly determining whether a patient has a bacterial infection,\u201d Wilson says. The team is working to identify probes that can target a broader range of pathogens and to test the method in more clinically relevant models before moving to patients, he adds.<\/p>\n

\n Chemical & Engineering News<\/p>\n

ISSN 0009-2347<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9
\n 2026 American Chemical Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diagnosing bacterial infections deep inside your tissues can be highly invasive, requiring procedures such as tissue biopsies or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[181934,181930,11494,3485,163910,181927,27622,85,181929,46,181933,181931,181932,141,181928],"class_list":{"0":"post-380037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-u-13c","9":"tag-13co2","10":"tag-amr","11":"tag-antibiotics","12":"tag-breath-analysis","13":"tag-breath-based-diagnostics","14":"tag-diagnostics","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-isotopic-analysis","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-maltose","19":"tag-microbial-metabolism","20":"tag-radiolabel-experiment","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-vocs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}