Volatile metabonomic profiling in urine to detect novel biomarkers for B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

To date, there have been a limited number of useful biomarkers for the screening and monitoring of B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (B-NHL), which leads to the impetus to discover novel biomarkers for the disease. In the present study, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) combined with head-space solid-phase micro-extraction (HS-SPME) was employed to analyze the volatile metabolites in the urine samples of 131 subjects. The subjects were divided into 4 main groups: Aggressive B-NHL, indolent B-NHL, benign lymphatic diseases patients and healthy volunteers. The differences of the concentrations of the potential biomarkers among the groups were assessed by non-parametric Wilcoxon's test. The ability of the potential biomarkers to discriminate between the four aforementioned groups was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC). The present study indicated that 4-heptanone, 2-methylpyrazine, 2-methylbutanal, 2,6-dimethyl-7-octen-2-ol and decanoic acid may serve as potential biomarkers for B-NHL. The area under the curve (AUC) values of single potential biomarker ranged from 0.634 to 0.901. The diagnostic models established with combined biomarkers exhibited higher diagnostic values (AUC, 0.824–0.968) compared with the models established with single biomarkers. The present study indicated that urinary volatile metabolites might be potential biomarkers for screening and monitoring of B-NHL.