Technical Report: A Comprehensive Comparison between Different Quantification Versions of Nightingale Health’s 1H-NMR Metabolomics Platform

Technical Report: A Comprehensive Comparison between Different Quantification Versions of Nightingale Health’s 1H-NMR Metabolomics Platform

Bizzarri, D. (TU Delft Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics; Leiden University Medical Center)
Reinders, M.J.T. (TU Delft Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics; Leiden University Medical Center)
Beekman, Marian (Leiden University Medical Center)
Slagboom, P. Eline (Leiden University Medical Center; Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing)
van den Akker, E.B. (TU Delft Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics; Leiden University Medical Center)

2023

1H-NMR metabolomics data is increasingly used to track health and disease. Nightingale Health, a major supplier of 1H-NMR metabolomics, has recently updated the quantification strategy to further align with clinical standards. Such updates, however, might influence backward replicability, particularly affecting studies with repeated measures. Using data from BBMRI-NL consortium (~28,000 samples from 28 cohorts), we compared Nightingale data, originally released in 2014 and 2016, with a re-quantified version released in 2020, of which both versions were based on the same NMR spectra. Apart from two discontinued and twenty-three new analytes, we generally observe a high concordance between quantification versions with 73 out of 222 (33%) analytes showing a mean ρ > 0.9 across all cohorts. Conversely, five analytes consistently showed lower Spearman’s correlations (ρ < 0.7) between versions, namely acetoacetate, LDL-L, saturated fatty acids, S-HDL-C, and sphingomyelins. Furthermore, previously trained multi-analyte scores, such as MetaboAge or MetaboHealth, might be particularly sensitive to platform changes. Whereas MetaboHealth replicated well, the MetaboAge score had to be retrained due to use of discontinued analytes. Notably, both scores in the re-quantified data recapitulated mortality associations observed previously. Concluding, we urge caution in utilizing different platform versions to avoid mixing analytes, having different units, or simply being discontinued.

NMR metabolomics
epidemiology
re-quantification
multivariate risk models
nightingale health

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9dcfffff-e6e3-46d3-93b4-b6777b3fa334

https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo13121181

2218-1989

Metabolites, 13 (12)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 D. Bizzarri, M.J.T. Reinders, Marian Beekman, P. Eline Slagboom, E.B. van den Akker