Metabonomics research of diabetic nephropathy and type 2 diabetes mellitus based on UPLC–oaTOF-MS system Original Research Article

Ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with orthogonal acceleration time-of-flight (oaTOF) mass spectrometry has showed great potential in diabetes research. In this paper, a UPLC–oaTOF-MS system was employed to distinguish the global serum profiles of 8 diabetic nephropathy (DN) patients, 33 type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients and 25 healthy volunteers, and tried to find potential biomarkers. The UPLC system produced information-rich chromatograms with typical measured peak widths of 4 s, generating peak capacities of 225 in 15 min. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) was used for group differentiation and marker selection. As shown in the scores plot, the distinct clustering between the patients and controls was observed, and DN and T2DM patients were also separated into two individual groups. Several compounds were tentatively identified based on accurate mass, isotopic pattern and MS/MS information. In addition, significant changes in the serum level of leucine, dihydrosphingosine and phytoshpingosine were noted, indicating the perturbations of amino acid metabolism and phospholipid metabolism in diabetic diseases, which having implications in clinical diagnosis and treatment.