Researchers have identified new biological markers of cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease which affects children and young adults, leaving them with lifelong health complications including digestive problems and persistent lung infections.

The findings, published in the journal ACS Central Science, shed new light on the underlying mechanisms of CF. They may could lead to improved prognosis and better therapies for a disease which is quite variable, affecting different children in different ways, say researchers.

“There are chemical signatures in sweat that tell us an infant has CF even when they do not exhibit any symptoms,” says Philip Britz-McKibbin, lead author of the study and a professor in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at McMaster University. “We set out to discover whether there were chemical indicators detected in sweat that could complement the gold standard for CF diagnosis: the sweat chloride test.”

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Paul McNicholas, Mathematics & Statistics, is among the latest cohort to be elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. He is one of the first people in his field to be elected. McNicholas, Canada Research Chair in Computational Statistics, works to develop approaches that extract as much quality information as possible from big, complex or otherwise ‘tricky’ data, which is key to solving emerging problems in areas as diverse as genetics, disease diagnostics, management science and terrorist behaviour. He was also recently appointed director of the MacDATA Institute.

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