Profiles of organic volatiles in biological fluids as an aid to the diagnosis of disease

Abstract

The transevaporator sampling technique is described for the solvent stripping of the organic volatile fraction from 5–500-µl samples of biological fluids prior to analysis by capillary column gas chromatography. The reproducible nature of the isolation and separation technique enables quantitative comparisons to be made between normal and pathological samples and marker substances of use for the diagnosis of the diseased state to be identified. Electron-capture detector profiles provide complementary information to the flame-ionisation detector that may prove to be very useful in developing biological correlations.