Targeting human urinary metabolome by LC–MS/MS: a review

Abstract

Urine is a biological matrix that contains hundreds of metabolic end products which constitute the urinary metabolome. The development and advances on LC-MS/MS have revolutionized the analytical study of biomolecules by enabling their accurate identification and quantification in an unprecedented manner. Nowadays, LC-MS/MS is helping to unveil the complexity of urine metabolome, and the results obtained have multiple biomedical applications. This review focuses on the targeted LC-MS/MS analysis of the urine metabolome. In the first part, we describe general considerations (from sample collection to quantitation) required for a proper targeted metabolic analysis. In the second part, we address the urinary analysis and recent applications of four relevant families: amino acids, catecholamines, lipids and steroids.

A role for metabolomics in the antidoping toolbox?

“…In past years, some studies have been published reporting metabolomics approaches to indirectly detect hormone administration in athletes (or healthy trained volunteers). All except one have been developed for urine 132 . All methods demonstrated the ability to distinguish treated athletes from controls, including signature metabolites from supplements used in different disciplines 131 .…”

Approaches in metabolomics for regulatory toxicology applications

“…14 The comprehensive and simultaneous analysis of hundreds of endogenous metabolites in a biological sample provides a direct snapshot of the biological activity in the studied system. 15 Metabolomics is now widely established as a tool serving diverse applications in systems biology, such as diagnosing diseases, associating risk factors with pathologies, monitoring the effectiveness of a treatment or facilitating drug discovery and development. [16][17][18] Metabolomics has also been applied in precision medicine 19 and clinical pharmacology 20 or even to discriminate potential positive cases of drug consumption 21 among many other applications.…”

Quantification of endogenous neurotransmitters and related compounds by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry

“…These are mainly based on a separation technique (high-performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography or capillary electrophoresis) [3,4] coupled to different detection techniques (ultraviolet absorbance, fluorescence, electrochemical, or mass spectrometry) [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Amongst the previous analytical tools, liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) allows the simultaneous measurement of multiple analytes with high sensitivity and selectivity in a wide dynamic range [11]. Moreover, it presents the possibility of avoiding derivatization agents (largely needed with gas chromatography) and shorting the running-time per sample.…”