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Characterization of missing values in untargeted MS-based metabolomics data and evaluation of missing data handling strategies

BACKGROUND: Untargeted mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics data often contain missing values that reduce statistical power and can introduce bias in biomedical studies. However, a systematic assessment of the various sources of missing values and strategies to handle these data has received li...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Do, Kieu Trinh, Wahl, Simone, Raffler, Johannes, Molnos, Sophie, Laimighofer, Michael, Adamski, Jerzy, Suhre, Karsten, Strauch, Konstantin, Peters, Annette, Gieger, Christian, Langenberg, Claudia, Stewart, Isobel D., Theis, Fabian J., Grallert, Harald, Kastenmüller, Gabi, Krumsiek, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6153696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30830398
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11306-018-1420-2
Descripción
Sumario:BACKGROUND: Untargeted mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics data often contain missing values that reduce statistical power and can introduce bias in biomedical studies. However, a systematic assessment of the various sources of missing values and strategies to handle these data has received little attention. Missing data can occur systematically, e.g. from run day-dependent effects due to limits of detection (LOD); or it can be random as, for instance, a consequence of sample preparation. METHODS: We investigated patterns of missing data in an MS-based metabolomics experiment of serum samples from the German KORA F4 cohort (n = 1750). We then evaluated 31 imputation methods in a simulation framework and biologically validated the results by applying all imputation approaches to real metabolomics data. We examined the ability of each method to reconstruct biochemical pathways from data-driven correlation networks, and the ability of the method to increase statistical power while preserving the strength of established metabolic quantitative trait loci. RESULTS: Run day-dependent LOD-based missing data accounts for most missing values in the metabolomics dataset. Although multiple imputation by chained equations performed well in many scenarios, it is computationally and statistically challenging. K-nearest neighbors (KNN) imputation on observations with variable pre-selection showed robust performance across all evaluation schemes and is computationally more tractable. CONCLUSION: Missing data in untargeted MS-based metabolomics data occur for various reasons. Based on our results, we recommend that KNN-based imputation is performed on observations with variable pre-selection since it showed robust results in all evaluation schemes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11306-018-1420-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.