Medical College of Wisconsin
CTSIResearch InformaticsREDCap

Reconstruction and analysis of correlation networks based on GC-MS metabolomics data for young hypertensive men. Anal Chim Acta 2015 Jan 07;854:95-105

Date

12/07/2014

Pubmed ID

25479872

Pubmed Central ID

PMC4432937

DOI

10.1016/j.aca.2014.11.009

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-84919419318 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   84 Citations

Abstract

The awareness, treatment, and control rates of hypertension for young adults are much lower than average. It is urgently needed to explore the variances of metabolic profiles for early diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. In current study, we applied a GC-MS based metabolomics platform coupled with a network approach to analyze plasma samples from young hypertensive men and age-matched healthy controls. Our findings confirmed distinct metabolic footprints of young hypertensive men. The significantly altered metabolites between two groups were enriched for the biological module of amino acids biosynthesis. The correlations of GC-MS metabolomics data were then visualized as networks based on Pearson correlation coefficient (threshold=0.6). The plasma metabolites identified by GC-MS and the significantly altered metabolites (P<0.05) between patients and controls were respectively included as nodes of a network. Statistical and topological characteristics of the networks were studied in detail. A few amino acids, glycine, lysine, and cystine, were screened as hub metabolites with higher values of degree (k), and also obtained highest scores of three centrality indices. The short average path lengths and high clustering coefficients of the networks revealed a small-world property, indicating that variances of these amino acids have a major impact on the metabolic change in young hypertensive men. These results suggested that disorders of amino acid metabolism might play an important role in predisposing young men to developing hypertension. The combination of metabolomics and network methods would provide another perspective on expounding the molecular mechanism underlying complex diseases.

Author List

Wang L, Hou E, Wang L, Wang Y, Yang L, Zheng X, Xie G, Sun Q, Liang M, Tian Z



MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adolescent
Adult
Amino Acids
Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
Humans
Hypertension
Male
Metabolomics
Young Adult