Suruchi Singh1, Tanushri Chatterji2, Manodeep Sen2, Ishwar Ram Dhayal3, and Raja Roy1
1Centre of Biomedical Research, Lucknow, India, 2Department of Microbiology, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India, 3Department of Urology, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India
Synopsis
This study presents
the metabolic perturbation in serum and urine samples while comparing Urosepsis
with negative and positive controls. It explores the metabolic differentiation
of serum samples with sepsis and urine samples with urinary tract infection (UTI)
(considered as positive controls), and healthy controls (considered as negative
controls) respectively. The serum and urine metabolic profile mainly depicted
changes occurring due to severity and spread of infection. The statistical
Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) model was robust enough to
differentiate the three groups distinctively in both serum and urine samples.
Introduction
Urosepsis is one of the most
dreaded diseases, defined as sepsis caused by urinary tract infection1.
Urosepsis may be associated with multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS),
hypo-perfusion or hypo-tension and is thus considered a medical emergency. It has been established as the
common cause of death world-wide2. Proton NMR based metabolic
profiling of serum and urine samples of Urosepsis cases performed earlier by
our group3 revealed that 1H NMR metabolic profiling can be utilized as a rapid and efficient
differential diagnostic tool for Urosepsis. The variation
in lactate and glucose levels was found to be similar to that of septicemia.
It was therefore thought worthwhile to compare
the changes occurring in the metabolic profile of small molecular weight
metabolites in serum samples of sepsis and urine samples of UTI cases (constituted
as positive controls for this study) for classifying Urosepsis more
specifically. Purpose
Since urosepsis is defined as
complicated UTI leading to sepsis, the differentiation of metabolic profile of
urine with UTI cases and serum with sepsis cases (considered as positive controls) was investigated by exploring the
potential advantages of metabolomics using 1H NMR spectroscopy (Figure
1 & 2). Material and Methods
A
total of eighty three subjects were enrolled for the study, out of which thirty
one were categorised as cases of urosepsis, twenty two samples were sepsis
cases (for comparing serum) and UTI cases (for comparing urine) considered as
positive controls while remaining thirty comprised the negative control group
with samples collected from healthy individuals having neither any clinical
abnormalities (such as diabetes, any infection, etc) nor any disease case
history in the past. Serum and urine were collected as per the standard
protocols4. One dimensional CPMG pulse sequence was
used for recording spectra of serum samples and 1D NOESY with water
presaturation experiment for urine samples respectively. The recorded spectral data was then binned into
rectangular buckets of 0.01 ppm size, and subjected to unsupervised multivariate Principal Component Analysis (PCA) followed
by supervised PLS-DA using “The Unscrambler X” software package (Version
10.0.1, CAMO, ASA, Norway). Results
A clear differentiation of
urosepsis cases with negative (healthy) controls was observed through PCA of
serum samples whereas the metabolic profile was found to be somewhat similar
with those of positive controls (sepsis cases) (Figure 3). However, supervised
PLS-DA considering the Y-variables showed
a clear
differentiation between diseased cases and controls (both positive as well as
negative controls) using full cross validation method. Metabolic profiling of
serum showed mainly an elevation of lactate levels and depletion
of glucose in both positive controls and urosepsis cases while comparing with
negative controls, along with elevation of lysine, acetone, DMA, choline and
depletion of alanine in majority of sepsis cases. The urine metabolic profiling separated all the
uroseptic cases distinctly from both the positive and negative controls through
both PCA and PLS-DA models (Figure 4). The
metabolic profiling of urine revealed an up-regulation of 1, 3- propane diol,
acetate, citrate DMA, TMA, choline containing compounds, urea, tyrosine,
histidine and hippurate only in UTI cases and lactate and alanine in both
urosepsis and UTI cases. The down-regulation of β-hydroxy butyrate in UTI cases
and citrate, DMA, TMAO, creatinine, urea and hippurate specifically
in urosepsis cases was also observed.Discussion
The 1H NMR metabolic
profile of serum of the cases was found to be severely altered in earlier
studies3, with elevated levels of lactate and decreased levels of
glucose while comparing with negative controls.
On the other hand,
comparison with positive controls (sepsis cases) mainly indicated the severity
of infection during different stages of sepsis despite of hyperlactatemia and
hypoglycemia which is a general observation in both urosepsis and sepsis cases. The urine metabolic profile was found to be different with
those of earlier reported UTI cases. This may be attributed to the complications
arising due to spread of the infection (UTI) into the urinary bladder causing
cystitis, followed by pyelonephritis, and ultimately leading to urosepsis. Conclusion
On the basis of metabolic profiling and statistical models generated (using
full cross validation method) for all the three groups together, it was found
that there was a clear separation of positive, negative controls and urosepsis
cases in both serum and urine samples. Further studies on larger
cohorts would be needed in order to determine the significance of these
findings in a larger patient population.Acknowledgements
The
authors are thankful to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical
Sciences for Intramural funding and Centre of Biomedical Research,
Lucknow where the present study was conducted. We are grateful to Dr. S. K.
Mandal (Consultant and Bio-statistician) at our Centre for cross-checking the
statistical results.References
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Serum lactate is associated with mortality in severe sepsis independent of
organ failure and shock. Crit Care Med. 2009; 37:1670-1677.
2. Dellinger
RP, Levy MM, Carlet JM, et al. Surviving Sepsis Campaign: International
guidelines for management of severe sepsis and septic shock: 2008. Crit Care Med 2008; 36:296-327.
3. Singh S, Chatterji T, Sen M, et al. Serum procalcitonin levels in
combination with 1HNMR spectroscopy: A rapid indicator for
differentiation of urosepsis. Clin. Chim.
Acta 2016; 453: 205-214.
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for NMR spectroscopy of urine, plasma, serum and tissue extracts. . Nature Protocols 2007; 2:2692-2703.