Prediction of Pathologic Change Development in the Pancreas Associated with Diabetes Mellitus Assessed by NMR Metabolomics

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive types of cancer and its current clinical diagnosis at early stages, which would improve the poor survival rate, is limited by insufficient sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, new diagnostic approaches such as metabolomics have been tested in recent years.

The publication in the Journal of Proteome Research from 2023 explores the use of NMR metabolomics in the prediction of pathological change development in the pancreas of patients with diabetes mellitus, building on the original study published in the same journal in 2021.

In this publication, NMR spectroscopy was used to identify metabolic changes in blood plasma samples from patients with pancreatic cancer in comparison with control groups consisting of healthy subjects and patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Samples from pancreatic cancer patients were subdivided according to clinical stage. Prediction models were created based on successful discrimination analyses between samples from pancreatic cancer patients of individual stages and patients with diabetes, allowing a finer classification of risk individuals from the group of patients with recent-onset diabetes mellitus. Twelve out of 59 recent-onset diabetes mellitus patients were identified as being at risk for the development of pathological changes in the pancreas. Models created based on the discrimination of early-stage pancreatic cancer and type 2 diabetes mellitus select predominantly patients suffering from mild pathological changes in the pancreas, whereas prediction models based on the terminal stage identify all at-risk individuals. The obtained results were supported by an assessment of the current health condition of all the patients. The findings published in this paper may contribute to new diagnostic strategies not only for this severe disease.

• Michálková L.*, Horník Š., Sýkora J.*, Setnička V., Bunganič B.*: Prediction of Pathologic Change Development in the Pancreas Associated with Diabetes Mellitus Assessed by NMR Metabolomics. J. Proteome Res. 2023, 22(6), 1936-1946. doi: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.3c00047