Correction: Detection of Colorectal Cancer (CRC) by Urinary Volatile Organic Compound Analysis

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer related death in Europe and the USA. There is no universally accepted effective non-invasive screening test for CRC. Guaiac based faecal occult blood (gFOB) testing has largely been superseded by Faecal Immunochemical testing (FIT), but sensitivity still remains poor. The uptake of population based FOBt testing in the UK is also low at around 50%. The detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) signature(s) for many cancer subtypes is receiving increasing interest using a variety of gas phase analytical instruments. One such example is FAIMS (Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer). FAIMS is able to identify Inflammatory Bowel disease (IBD) patients by analysing shifts in VOCs patterns in both urine and faeces. This study extends this concept to determine whether CRC patients can be identified through non-invasive analysis of urine, using FAIMS. 133 patients were recruited; 83 CRC patients and 50 healthy controls. Urine was collected at the time of CRC diagnosis and headspace analysis undertaken using a FAIMS instrument (Owlstone, Lonestar, UK). Data was processed using Fisher Discriminant Analysis (FDA) after feature extraction from the raw data. FAIMS analyses demonstrated that the VOC profiles of CRC patients were tightly clustered and could be distinguished from healthy controls. Sensitivity and specificity for CRC detection with FAIMS were 88% and 60% respectively. This study suggests that VOC signatures emanating from urine can be detected in patients with CRC using ion mobility spectroscopy technology (FAIMS) with potential as a novel screening tool. Citation: Arasaradnam RP, McFarlane MJ, Ryan-Fisher C, Westenbrink E, Hodges P, et al. (2014) Detection of Colorectal Cancer (CRC) by Urinary Volatile Organic Compound Analysis. PLoS ONE 9(9): e108750. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108750 Editor: Keping Xie, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States of America Received June 13, 2014; Accepted August 25, 2014; Published September 30, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Arasaradnam et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are included within the paper. Funding: The work was supported by Bardhan Research and Education Charity (BRET) charity, Warwickshire Private Hospital charity, Eveson trust provided funding for materials. BRET was established by Professor Bardhan but he had no input into the funding decision made by the grant awarding committee. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * Email: r.arasaradnam@warwick.ac.uk