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Increased levels of ethane, a non-invasive, quantitative, direct marker of n-3 lipid peroxidation, in the breath of patients with schizophrenia

Background

This study directly assessed whether there was a change in the level of exhaled ethane, which provides a non-invasive, quantitative, direct measure of n-3 lipid peroxidation, in the breath of patients with schizophrenia.

Materials and methods

Samples of alveolar air were obtained from 20 subjects with schizophrenia and 23 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects. The air samples were analyzed for ethane using mass spectrometry.

Results

The mean level of ethane in the schizophrenia sample (5.15 (S.E. 0.56) ppb) was significantly higher than that of the healthy controls (2.63 (S.E. 0.31) ppb; p < 0.0005). A further sub-analysis showed that nicotine dependence was unlikely to be the cause of this difference.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the measurement of exhaled ethane levels may offer a non-invasive direct marker of increased n-3 lipid peroxidation in schizophrenia.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Puri, B.K., Ross, B.M. & Treasaden, I.H. Increased levels of ethane, a non-invasive, quantitative, direct marker of n-3 lipid peroxidation, in the breath of patients with schizophrenia. Ann Gen Psychiatry 9 (Suppl 1), S150 (2010). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S150

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  • DOI: https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S150

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