Metabolomics and Their Ability to Distinguish Thyroid Disorders: A Retrospective Pilot Study

Abstract

Early diagnosis of thyroid disorders is key to further treatment. We assessed the ability of a high-throughput proton NMR metabolomic profile to distinguish disease type amongst of Graves’ disease (n=87), Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (n=17), toxic goiter (n=11), and autoimmune thyroiditis [i. e., subacute thyroiditis (n=4), postpartum thyroiditis (n=1)]. This observational study was conducted investigating patients presenting with a thyroid disorder at a Swiss hospital endocrine referral center and an associated endocrine outpatient clinic. The main outcome was diagnosis of thyroid disorder based on classical parameters. Blood draws took place as close as possible to treatment initiation. We performed one-way ANOVA and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) as multivariate classification and feature ranking method. One-way ANOVA analysis yielded following significantly different metabolites, triglycerides in small VLDL, triglycerides in very small VLDL, and triglycerides in large LDL (FDR=0.04). There was no distinct separation of any of the 4 diagnoses by PLS-DA. We did not find a metabolomic biomarker combination capable of predicting diagnosis. Preanalytical issues might have influenced our results. We strongly suggest replicating our work in another cohort.

A Clinical Trial for the Identification of Metabolic Biomarkers in Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and in Psoriasis: Study Protocol

“…Metabolomics has emerged as a potent tool to identify molecular dysfunctions that indicate the development of a disease pathogenesis years before the symptoms [ 42 ]. In this direction, previous studies have focused on the metabolic fingerprint of chronic diseases aiming at the identification of metabolic biomarkers that can discriminate or predict the presence of a disease [ 30 , 43 , 44 ].…”

Global view on the pathogenesis of benign thyroid disease based on historical, experimental, biochemical and genetic data, identifying the role of magnesium, selenium, coenzyme Q10 and iron in the context of the unfolded protein response and protein quality control of thyroglobulin

“…The same researchers tried to find markers for the early diagnosis of thyroid disease on the basis of metabolomics. The authors could not find any metabolomics parameter that was able to fulfill this expectation [74] .…”