NMR-based metabolomic study of type 1 diabetes

The genetic homogeneity of the people of
Sardinia makes it an ideal place to study genetic related
diseases such as type 1 diabetes, which in this island has
one of the highest incidence worldwide. The principal
objective of this study was to use 1H high-resolution NMR
spectroscopy and supervised methods of multivariate data
analysis to highlight the importance of the variation of low
concentration metabolites between healthy and diabetic
Sardinian children. To achieve this goal, statistical analyses
were performed after removal of the prevailing signals of
sugars and citrate (related to carbohydrate metabolism) and
of hippurate (a metabolite of bacterial origins) whose
presence overwhelmed all the other compounds effects on
classification. The variable influence in the statistical
model showed that other metabolites deriving from gut
microbial metabolism (p-cresol sulphate and phenylacetylglycine)
were heavily involved in classification. This
suggests the importance of changes in gut microbiota
composition associated with type 1 diabetes in children.