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Development and validation of a UPLC/MS method for a nutritional metabolomic study of human plasma

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Abstract

In order to study the effect of a diet on metabolites found in body fluids such as plasma, we have developed and validated a UPLC/MS method. While methods using NMR have been well established to analyse different biological tissues, recent studies have described robust untargeted UPLC-MS methods for plasma analysis. One major concern when profiling plasma is the presence of an important quantity of proteins which have to be precipitated without any loss of metabolites prior to LC/MS analysis. The utilization of untargeted approaches in nutritional metabolomics still suffers from the lack of identification of specific biomarkers. We therefore suggest an alternative method still using a global approach but focusing at the same time on metabolites previously described in human plasma in order to detect biomarkers of metabolic dysregulations. Thus, to fulfil our objectives, analytical parameters were tested (i) the anticoagulant type for sample collection, (ii) the protein precipitation method and (iii) UPLC/MS analytical conditions. Three protein precipitation methods and two anticoagulants were tested and compared. The method utilizing blood collection on heparin and methanol precipitation was chosen for giving the most reproducible results while keeping the complexity of the sample. Finally, a validation was proposed to evaluate the stability of this analytical method applied to a large batch of samples for nutritional metabolomic studies.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the ANR (METAPROFILE project) for financial support. HP, EPG and JLS wish to acknowledge extensive discussion with Jean Philippe Antignac, Olivier Berdeaux and Christophe Junot.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plateforme d’Exploration du Métabolisme, INRA, UMR 1019, Unité de Nutrition Humaine, Centre de Recherche de Clermont-Ferrand/Theix, F-63122, St-Genès-Champanelle, France

    Hélène Pereira, Jean-François Martin, Charlotte Joly, Jean-Louis Sébédio & Estelle Pujos-Guillot

  2. Clermont Université, UFR Médecine, UMR 1019 Nutrition Humaine, F-63000, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Hélène Pereira, Jean-François Martin, Charlotte Joly, Jean-Louis Sébédio & Estelle Pujos-Guillot

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  1. Hélène Pereira
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  2. Jean-François Martin
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  3. Charlotte Joly
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  4. Jean-Louis Sébédio
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  5. Estelle Pujos-Guillot
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Correspondence to Estelle Pujos-Guillot.

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Pereira, H., Martin, JF., Joly, C. et al. Development and validation of a UPLC/MS method for a nutritional metabolomic study of human plasma. Metabolomics 6, 207–218 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-009-0188-9

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