About Detecting Disease

Menssana Research does NOT provide diagnostic tests for disease. Instead, we provide safe, painless, two-minute breath tests which can accurately tell you if you don't need to get more tests. This can save a great deal of pain, money, and time for everyone involved.

Reaching a diagnosis of any disease is like climbing a ladder. Every rung on the ladder represents a test that is more expensive and more hazardous, with tissue biopsy on the top rung. That's why doctors start at the bottom of the ladder with the safest and most cost-effective screening tests.

A Menssana breath test, such as our lung cancer test (Lungscreen), provides the first and lowest rung on that diagnostic ladder. It is painless and completely safe. If the test is negative, the patient happily gets off the ladder. If the test is positive, then the patient climbs up the ladder to the next rung, which for our lung cancer example would be chest CT.

Lungscreen has a negative predictive value of >99%. This means that a person with a negative breath test has a better than 99% chance of NOT having lung cancer, so if they get a negative Lungscreen result, they can rest reassured that no further tests are necessary.

If a person has a positive Lungscreen breath test, the breath test is NOT diagnostic of lung cancer. However, it does identify people at increased risk of lung cancer who should then go on to further evaluation, such as a chest CT. A large, NIH-sponsored study in the U.S. showed that chest CT screening saves lives. However, it is clearly too expensive and too hazardous to use chest CT for widespread primary screening for lung cancer.

If you are a physician who would like to use our equipment and services for your tests, please visit our pages for the BCA and lab analysis services to learn more.

If you are a patient who might qualify for one of our studies and you'd like to enroll, you can find our current study sites (in blue) on our test centers page along with their contact information.

If you are interested in taking a breath test for environmental toxicology, there are two sites (in green) listed on the test centers page. Environmental toxicology tests are not covered by insurance. DISCLAIMER - Accuracy of VOC identifications: GC/MS identifies VOCs with high accuracy, but it is not an infallible technique. The top NIST library identifications of VOCs are reported with their fit score (up to a maximum of 1,000) with the NIST library mass spectrum.

This is not intended for use as a test for disease. This test reports volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detected in breath and air.