Infectious pathogens are a global issue. Global air travelling offers an easy and fast opportunity not only for people but also for infectious diseases to spread around the world within a few days. Therefore a rapid on-site screening of infected people is urgently needed. Due to the small size and easy handling, the ion mobility spectrometry coupled with a multicapillary column (MCC-IMS) is a very promising, sensitive method for the on-site identification of infectious pathogens based on

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... volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The purpose of this study was to prospectively assess whether differentiation between patients suffering from common cold and those from Influenza-A-infection based on VOCs with MCC-IMS is possible. Nasal breath was investigated in 24 consecutive patients suspected of having Influenza-A-infection by MCC-IMS. In 14 Influenza-A-infected patients, infection was proven by PCR of nasopharyngeal swabs. Ten patients with negative PCR diagnosis served as controls. For picking up relevant VOCs in MCC-IMS spectra, software based on cluster analysis followed by multivariate statistical analysis was applied. With only four VOCs canonical discriminant analysis was able to distinguish Influenza-A-infected patients from PCR- negative patients with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. This present proof-of-concept- study yields encouraging results showing a rapid diagnosis of viral infections in nasal breath within 5 minutes by MCC-IMS. The next step is to validate the results with a greater number of patients with Influenza-A-infection as well as other viral diseases. Registration number at ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04282135.