Human beings as islands of stability: Monitoring body states using breath profiles

By checking the reproducibility of conventional mid-infrared Fourier spectroscopy of human breath in a small test study (15 individuals), we found that a set of volatile organic compounds (VOC) of the individual breath samples remains reproducible at least for 18 months. This set forms a unique individual’s “island of stability” (IOS) in a multidimensional VOC concentration space. The IOS stability can simultaneously be affected by various life effects as well as the onset of a disease. Reflecting the body state, they both should have different characteristics. Namely, they could be distinguished by different temporal profiles: In the case of life effects (beverage intake, physical or mental exercises, smoking etc.), there is a non-monotonic shift of the IOS position with the return to the steady state, whereas a progressing disease corresponds to a monotonic IOS shift. As a first step of proving these dependencies, we studied various life effects with the focus on the strength and characteristic time of the IOS shift. In general, our results support homeostasis on a long time scale of months, allostasis on scales of hours to weeks or until smoke quitting for smokers, as well as resilience in the case of recovery from a disease.