title: Exploration of the serum metabolite signature in patients with rheumatoid arthritis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.
abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease with complicated pathogeny. There could be obvious alterations of metabolism in the patients with RA and the discovery of metabolic signature may be helpful for the accurate diagnosis of RA. In order to explore the distinctive metabolic patterns in RA patients, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method was employed. Serum samples from 33 RA patients and 32 healthy controls were collected and analyzed. Acquired metabolic data were assessed by the principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and the data analysis results showed RA patients and healthy controls have very different metabolic profiles. Variable importance for project values (VIP) and Student's t-test were combined to screen the significant metabolic changes caused by RA. Serums from RA patients were featured by decreased levels of amino acids and glucose, increased levels of fatty acids and cholesterol, which were primarily associated with glycolytic pathway, fatty acid and amino acid metabolism, and other related pathways including TCA cycle and the urea cycle. These preliminary results suggest that GC-MS based metabolic profiling study appears to be a useful tool in the exploration of the metabolic signature of RA, and the revealed disease-associated metabolic perturbations could help to elucidate the pathogenesis of RA and provide a probable aid for the accurate diagnosis of RA.
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Jiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Changfeng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Zhijun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Haichang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Shuangshuang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China.
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medical, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, 548 Binwen Road, Hangzhou 310053, China. Electronic address: wengcp@163.com.
authors.forename: Chengping
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China. Electronic address: xugw@dicp.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Guowang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000097:blood*; D001799:Blood Sedimentation; D002097:C-Reactive Protein / Q000032:analysis; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D055442:Metabolome; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012217:Rheumatoid Factor / Q000097:blood
chemical_list: D002097:C-Reactive Protein; D012217:Rheumatoid Factor
keywords: Disease-associated metabolites; GC–MS; Metabolomics; Rheumatoid arthritis; Serum