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.