Serum metabonomics study of chronic renal failure by ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with Q-TOF mass spectrometry

A metabonomics technique based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with Q-TOF mass spectrometry was employed to investigate the sera from 32 patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) without renal replacement therapy and 30 healthy volunteers in order to find potential disease biomarkers and reveal its pathophysiological changes. After data acquisition Waters MarkerLynx software was used to report retention time and m/z pairs for each metabolite peak, these data were exported to an excel table, then handled by using multivariate analysis and the statistical analysis in the SIMCA-P and the SPSS softwares to obtain potential biomarkers which were further identified by MS/MS. Seven potential biomarkers, creatinine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, kynurenine and three lysophosphatidylcholines, were identified. The results suggest that CRF can lead to the increase of reservation of creatinine in the body, and the abnormal metabolism of the two essential amino acids and lysophosphatidylcholines. It has indicated that metabonomics will be a powerful tool in the clinic research.