A gadget that fits into a person’s pocket could help unravel the environmental triggers for asthma attacks. Researchers created the portable gas sensor to study the relationship between asthma symptoms and the air a sufferer breathes.
People with asthma experience constricted airways and a tightening of the chest, symptoms that sometimes flare up into full blown attack of breathlessness. Certain allergens and pollutants are thought to worsen symptoms or to trigger severe attacks and the researchers hope to explore this connection.
“We are investigating whether we can go back after an asthma attack and see what was going on environmentally when the attack started,” says Charlene Bayer, a researcher at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, US.
The new portable device should make it much easier to gather this information. It weighs 450g, including batteries, and takes a sample of air every 2 minutes.
The device measures levels of formaldehyde, carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are released by paints and other chemical products.
It also records temperature and relative humidity. Results are recorded for later analysis and a filter traps catch fine particles for study.
So far, six volunteers have tested the kit, wearing it in the pocket of a special vest through the day, and keeping it beside their bed at night. They were also provided with an electronic peak flow meter to record their lung function, and asked to note the time of any asthma attacks.
After collecting a patient’s results the researchers can look back for correlations between symptoms and environmental conditions. For example, volatile organic pollutants around one volunteer’s home were found to exacerbate their symptoms. Further investigation revealed they were leaking in from the garage. Bayer hopes to test the equipment on children suffering from asthma.
“To measure air quality around patients the whole time is very difficult,” says Eiman Kanjo, of Cambridge University, UK. “This device can gather valuable data.”
Kanjo has developed of mobile pollution sensors that connect to a sufferer’s cellphones to report air quality across a city.
Using mobile phones has several benefits, she told New Scientist. “You can transmit results to medical staff and researchers easily over GPRS,” she explains. “Having to access the device to get results doesn’t make it so easy.”
Kanjo says that eventually patients might access their own records, via the phone’s screen, to look for trends that would explain an attack.