Metabolomic analysis of human cerebrospinal fluid in patients with tuberculous meningitis using ultra high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To study the non-target metabolomics analysis and to analyze the metabolomic changesof cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in patients with tuberculous meningitis.Methods:Case-control study. From July 2018 to July 2019, 20 cerebrospinal fluid specimens of diagnosed patients with tuberculous meningitis were collectedin the department of neurology from the first medical center of the PLA general hospital and the eighth medical center of the PLA general hospital and 20 CSF without tuberculous meningitis as the control. Among them, there were 12 males and 8 femalesin the tuberculous meningitis group, aged (37.9±16.1) years; there were 13 males and 7 femalesin the control group, aged (34.7±14.8) years. Using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) technology with three different mode, namely reverse phase chromatography positive ion mode, reverse phase chromatography negative ion mode and hydrophilic chromatography positive ion mode,to detectthe metabolic fingerprints of patients′CSF and analyzed by SIMCA software for orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). The variable importance projection value of OPLS-DA model (threshold value>1) plus the P value of t-test (P<0.05) was applied to find the differential metabolites in the cerebrospinal fluid of the two groups of patients.Results:Ten differential metabolites were found in CSF, including L-isoleucine, L-phenylalanine, L-kynurenine, L-methionine, L-tyrosine acid, dimethylglycine, L-alanine, L-threonine, L-histidine and L-lysine, and all of them were up-regulated in the tuberculous meningitis group.Conclusion:Changesof the amino acid metabolism found in the cerebrospinal fluid of tuberculous meningitis patients can provide basis for differential diagnosis and basic molecular research of tuberculous meningitis.