Department of Environmental Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322, United States of America.
J Breath Res. 2017 Dec 6;12(1):016008. doi: 10.1088/1752-7163/aa863c.
Advances in the development of high-resolution metabolomics (HRM) have provided new opportunities for their use in characterizing exposures to environmental air pollutants and air pollution-related disease etiologies. Exposure assessment studies have considered blood, breath, and saliva as biological matrices suitable for measuring responses to air pollution exposures. The current study examines comparability among these three matrices using HRM and explores their potential for measuring mobile-source air toxics.
Four participants provided saliva, exhaled breath concentrate (EBC), and plasma before and after a 2 h road traffic exposure. Samples were analyzed on a Thermo Scientific QExactive MS system in positive electrospray ionization mode and resolution of 70 000 full-width at half-maximum with C18 chromatography. Data were processed using an apLCMS and xMSanalyzer on the R statistical platform.
The analysis yielded 7110, 6019, and 7747 reproducible features in plasma, EBC, and saliva, respectively. Correlations were moderate-to-strong (R = 0.41-0.80) across all pairwise comparisons of feature intensity within profiles, with the strongest between EBC and saliva. The associations of mean intensities between matrix pairs were positive and significant, controlling for subject and sampling time effects. Six out of 20 features shared in all three matrices putatively matched a list of known mobile-source air toxics.
Plasma, saliva, and EBC have largely comparable metabolic profiles measurable through HRM. These matrices have the potential to be used in identification and measurement of exposures to mobile-source air toxics, though further, targeted study is needed.
高分辨率代谢组学（HRM）的发展进步为其应用于描述环境空气污染物暴露和与空气污染相关的病因学提供了新的机会。暴露评估研究已经考虑了血液、呼气和唾液作为适合测量对空气污染暴露反应的生物基质。本研究使用 HRM 检查了这三种基质之间的可比性，并探讨了它们在测量移动源空气毒物方面的潜力。
四名参与者在 2 小时道路交通暴露前后提供了唾液、呼出的浓缩物（EBC）和血浆。样品在 Thermo Scientific QExactive MS 系统上以正电喷雾电离模式和 70000 全宽半最大值分辨率进行分析，并采用 C18 色谱。数据使用 R 统计平台上的 apLCMS 和 xMSanalyzer 进行处理。
分析分别在血浆、EBC 和唾液中得到了 7110、6019 和 7747 个可重现的特征。在所有配对比较中，特征强度的相关性为中度至强（R=0.41-0.80），EBC 和唾液之间的相关性最强。控制个体和采样时间效应后，矩阵对之间平均强度的关联呈正相关且具有统计学意义。在所有三种基质中，有 6 个特征的平均强度存在关联，这 6 个特征被认为与已知的移动源空气毒物匹配。
血浆、唾液和 EBC 具有可通过 HRM 测量的高度可比的代谢谱。这些基质有可能用于识别和测量移动源空气毒物的暴露，但需要进一步的、有针对性的研究。
