Delipidation-based solid-phase extraction pretreatment technique for plasma broad-coverage metabolomic profiling to...

During the process of metabolomics profiling by using ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with time-of flight mass spectrometry, blood sample pretreatment is a crucial step for biomarker discovery. Herein, in order to prevent the potential loss of metabolites and ion suppression phenomena caused by the proteins and phospholipids contained in blood fluids, a delipidation-based solid-phase extraction pretreatment technique for plasma broad-coverage metabolomic profiling was performed. This technique can be summarized as a single extraction, a single elution of solid-phase extraction plate, followed by four times measuring with electrospray ionization in positive and negative ion mode, respectively. This approach significantly increased the number of features detected in plasma, and 1572 features in positive mode and 1352 features in negative mode were detected, respectively. Besides, the stability and repeatability of the approach were greatly improved. For these advantages, the approach was employed to elucidate the potential pathogenesis of yeast-induced fever in rats. The biomarkers associated with the pathogenesis of fever were shown to be related to amino acids metabolism and lipid metabolism. The delipidation-based solid-phase extraction pretreatment approach can provide a useful tool to reveal the pathological mechanisms of such systemic pathological process.