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, 2methylbutanal, 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.