DataSheet1_A Comparison of Serum and Plasma Blood Collection Tubes for the Integration of Epidemiological and Metabolomics Data.PDF

Blood is a rich biological sample routinely collected in clinical and epidemiological studies. With advancements in high throughput -omics technology, such as metabolomics, epidemiology can now delve more deeply and comprehensively into biological mechanisms involved in the etiology of diseases. However, the impact of the blood collection tube matrix of samples collected needs to be carefully considered to obtain meaningful biological interpretations and understand how the metabolite signatures are affected by different tube types. In the present study, we investigated whether the metabolic profile of blood collected as serum differed from samples collected as ACD plasma, citrate plasma, EDTA plasma, fluoride plasma, or heparin plasma. We identified and quantified 50 metabolites present in all samples utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The heparin plasma tubes performed the closest to serum, with only three metabolites showing significant differences, followed by EDTA which significantly differed for five metabolites, and fluoride tubes which differed in eleven of the fifty metabolites. Most of these metabolite differences were due to higher levels of amino acids in serum compared to heparin plasma, EDTA plasma, and fluoride plasma. In contrast, metabolite measurements from ACD and citrate plasma differed significantly for approximately half of the metabolites assessed. These metabolite differences in ACD and citrate plasma were largely due to significant interfering peaks from the anticoagulants themselves. Blood is one of the most banked samples and thus mining and comparing samples between studies requires understanding how the metabolite signature is affected by the different media and different tube types.

血液作为一种常规收集于临床和流行病学研究中的丰富生物样本，随着高通量-组学技术，如代谢组学的进步，流行病学现在能够更加深入和全面地探究疾病病因中的生物学机制。然而，收集样本时所使用的血样采集管基质的影响必须谨慎考虑，以确保获得有意义的生物学解释，并理解代谢物特征如何受到不同管型的影响。在本研究中，我们探讨了血清中收集的血液的代谢谱是否与ACD血浆、柠檬酸盐血浆、EDTA血浆、氟化物血浆或肝素血浆收集的样本存在差异。我们利用核磁共振(NMR)光谱学识别和量化了所有样本中存在的50种代谢物。肝素血浆管与血清的相似度最高，仅有三种代谢物显示出显著差异，其次是EDTA，其在五种代谢物上显示出显著差异，而氟化物管在五十种代谢物中有十一种存在差异。这些代谢物差异的大部分原因是血清中氨基酸水平高于肝素血浆、EDTA血浆和氟化物血浆。相反，ACD和柠檬酸盐血浆的代谢物测量在评估的代谢物中约有一半存在显著差异。这些ACD和柠檬酸盐血浆中的代谢物差异主要归因于抗凝剂自身产生的显著干扰峰。血液是银行库存样本之一，因此挖掘和比较不同研究之间的样本需要理解代谢物特征如何受到不同介质和不同管型的影响。