Cristina E. Davis and colleagues note that studying dolphins' health is about more than preserving their populations -- the popular mammals also can serve as sentinels for overall ocean health. But invasive techniques such as skin biopsies and blood sampling, which are the most effective ways to test their health, are difficult to perform. An intriguing alternative comes from research on human-health monitoring with breath analyzers. Exhaled breath contains compounds called metabolites that can hint at a person's diet, activity level, environmental exposures or disease state. Davis' team wanted to develop a way to capture dolphin breath so they could gather this kind of information on marine mammals.

The researchers designed an insulated tube customized to trap the breath exhaled from the blowhole of the bottlenose dolphin. They tested it on dolphins both in the wild and under human care. The scientists established baseline breath profiles of healthy animals and identified changes in the breath of animals affected by disease or other factors. The researchers conclude that breath analysis could someday be used to diagnose and monitor problems in marine mammals -- and by extension, in ocean health.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Office of Naval Research, The Hartwell Foundation and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

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Materials provided by American Chemical Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Alexander A Aksenov, Laura Yeates, Alberto Pasamontes, Craig Siebe, Yuriy Zrodnikov, Jason Simmons, Mitchell M. McCartney, Jean-Pierre Delplanque, Randall Wells, Cristina Elizabeth Davis. Metabolite content profiling of bottlenose dolphin exhaled breath.. Analytical Chemistry, 2014; 140925142838003 DOI: 10.1021/ac5024217