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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mol. Biosci.
Sec. Metabolomics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2025.1534102
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Mass Spectrometry: Transforming Analytical Chemistry in Molecular and Spatial Biology, Multimodal Omics, and Bioanalysis View all 3 articles
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Acute intra-abdominal infection (IAI) is a prevalent and life-threatening condition in general surgery, with significant implications for patient mortality. However, the timely identification of IAI is often hindered by the limitations of current medical laboratory sciences and imaging diagnostics. To address this critical issue, we employed metabolomics to identify early biomarkers for IAI. In this study, we enrolled a cohort of 30 IAI patients and 20 healthy volunteers. Following preliminary experimental processing, all serum and urinary samples were subjected to ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-triple time-of-flight mass spectrometry analysis. Initial metabolite profiling was conducted using total ion current chromatography and principal component analysis. Differential metabolites were subsequently identified through Student's t-test, partial least squares discriminant analysis, and support vector machine. Hierarchical clustering analysis was then applied to assess the discriminatory power of the selected metabolites. Based on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, we identified the most promising biomarkers, which were further subjected to enrichment analysis. Additionally, we stratified patients according to the severity and etiology of IAI to explore potential differences among these subgroups. Our findings revealed five serum and two urinary metabolites as potential biomarkers for IAI. The serum biomarkers were associated with the Fatty Acid Biosynthesis pathway, while the urinary biomarkers were linked to the Catecholamine Biosynthesis pathway. Notably, no significant differences were observed among the three types of IAI or the seven etiologies studied. For individuals at risk of IAI, regular screening of these biomarkers could facilitate the early and convenient identification of the condition, thereby improving patient outcomes.
Keywords: UHPLC-TripleTOF MS, Acute intra-abdominal infection, Metabolomics, biomarkers, Serum, Urine
Received: 30 Jan 2025; Accepted: 12 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dong, Zhang, Zhang, Zhao, Pan and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Daguang Wang, Department of Gastroenterology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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