Breath Condensate Study in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis.

There is an urgent need for a noninvasive method to diagnose bronchial infections and exacerbations in patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). The current method to diagnosed infections involves either collecting a sputum sample or obtaining a bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). However, some patients cannot produce sputum. At the same time the decision of when a patient has an exacerbation continues to be very subjective. In this exploratory study, we propose a new, noninvasive method to diagnose bronchial infections and to evaluate possible markers of inflammation that can assist in a noninvasive way in the determination of exacerbations.