Methanol poisoning outbreaks after consumption of adulterated alcohol or sanitizers frequently overwhelm health care facilities in developing countries. Here, we present how a recently developed low-cost and handheld breath detector can serve as a non-invasive and rapid diagnostic tool for methanol poisoning [1]. The detector combines a separation column and a micromachined chemoresistive gas sensor [2] fully integrated into a device that communicates wirelessly with a smartphone [3]. The performance of the detector is validated with methanol-spiked breath of 20 volunteers (105 breath samples) after consumption of alcoholic beverages. Breath methanol concentrations were quantified accurately within 2 min in the full breath-relevant range (10 – 1000 ppm) in excellent agreement (R² = 0.966) with benchtop mass spectrometry (PTR-TOF-MS). Bland-Altman analysis revealed sufficient limits of agreement (95% confidence intervals), promising to indicate reliably the clinical need for antidote and hemodialysis treatment. This simple-in-use detector features high diagnostic capability for accurate measurement of methanol in spiked breath, promising for rapid screening of methanol poisoning and assessment of severity. It can be applied readily by first responders to distinguish methanol from ethanol poisoning and monitor in real time the subsequent hospital treatment. The device can also be applied as analysis tool to screen alcoholic beverages [4] and sanitizers [5] by head-space analysis to prevent poisoning cases.

References:
[1] Anal. Chem. 2021, 93, 1170.
[2] Nature Commun. 2019, 10, 4220.
[3] Nature Food 2020, 1, 351.
[4] ACS Food Science & Technology 2021, 1, 839.
[5] iScience 2021, 24, 102050.

Andreas Guentner

Appearances