Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are heterogeneous diseases with high pathological burden and healthcare costs. In the outpatient clinical practice, an accurate differential diagnosis is often very difficult, particularly in adult smokers, requiring specific lung function tests. Since nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) discriminates adults with COPD or asthma from healthy subjects, we hypothesised that it is also able to differentiate asthma and COPD patients of different severities.

Read More