Serum metabonomics of acute leukemia using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Acute leukemia is a critical neoplasm of white blood cells. In order to differentiate between the metabolic alterations associated with two subtypes of acute leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), we investigated the serum of ALL and AML patients and compared with two controls (healthy and aplastic anemia) using 1 H NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy. Thirty-seven putative metabolites were identified using Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) sequence. The use of PLS-DA and OPLS-DA models gave results with 84.38% and 90.63% classification rate, respectively. The metabolites responsible for classification are mainly lipids, lactate and glucose. Compared with controls, ALL and AML patients showed serum metabonomic differences involving aberrant metabolism pathways including glycolysis, TCA cycle, lipoprotein changes, choline and fatty acid metabolisms.