Abstract
Introduction
Mass spectrometry and computational biology have advanced significantly in the past ten years, bringing the field of metabolomics a step closer to personalized medicine applications. Despite these analytical advancements, collection of blood samples for routine clinical analysis is still performed through traditional blood draws.
Objective
TAP capillary blood collection has been recently introduced for the rapid, painless draw of small volumes of blood (~ 100 μL), though little is known about the comparability of metabolic phenotypes of blood drawn via traditional venipuncture and TAP devices.
Methods
UHPLC-MS-targeted metabolomics analyses were performed on blood drawn traditionally or through TAP devices from 5 healthy volunteers. Absolute quantitation of 45 clinically-relevant metabolites was calculated against stable heavy isotope-labeled internal standards.
Results
Ranges for 39 out of 45 quantified metabolites overlapped between drawing methods. Pyruvate and succinate were over threefold higher in the TAP samples than in traditional blood draws. No significant changes were observed for other carboxylates, glucose or lactate. TAP samples were characterized by increases in reduced glutathione and decreases in urate and cystine, markers of oxidation of purines and cysteine—overall suggesting decreased oxidation during draws. The absolute levels of bile acids and acyl-carnitines, as well as almost all amino acids, perfectly correlated among groups (Spearman r ≥ 0.95).
Conclusion
Though further more extensive studies will be mandatory, this pilot suggests that TAP-derived blood may be a logistically-friendly source of blood for large scale metabolomics studies—especially those addressing amino acids, glycemia and lactatemia as well as bile acids, acyl-carnitine levels.
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Acknowledgements
Research reported in this publication was supported in part by funds from the Boettcher Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Award—Early Career grant (ADA) and the Shared Instrument grant by the National Institute of Health (S10OD021641). We would like to thank Seventh Sense for kindly and gratuitously donatng prototype TAP devices for the sake of this pilot study.
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Though unrelated to the contents of this manuscript, ADA and TN are founders of Omix Technologies Inc and ALTIS Biosciences LLC. ADA is a consultant for New Health Sciences Inc. All the remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. No economic support was provided by Seventh Sense Biosystems, except for the kind donation of a limited number of prototypes tested in this study.
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Catala, A., Culp-Hill, R., Nemkov, T. et al. Quantitative metabolomics comparison of traditional blood draws and TAP capillary blood collection. Metabolomics 14, 100 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-018-1395-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-018-1395-z