Impact of storage conditions on the urinary metabolomics fingerprint

- HILIC and RPLC chromatographies were used for an exhaustive metabolomic approach.
- A chemical database was created (n > 200) to identify affected urine metabolites.
- Urine metabolic profile is altered starting from 5 days following storage at +4C°.
- A number of urine metabolites profiles start being altered after a month at −20C°.
- −80 °C was considered as the most convenient urine long-term storage condition.

Urine stability during storage is essential in metabolomics to avoid misleading conclusions or erroneous interpretations. Facing the lack of comprehensive studies on urine metabolome stability, the present work performed a follow-up of potential modifications in urinary chemical profile using LC-HRMS on the basis of two parameters: the storage temperature (+4 °C, −20 °C, −80 °C and freeze-dried stored at −80 °C) and the storage duration (5-144 days). Both HILIC and RP chromatographies have been implemented in order to globally monitor the urinary metabolome. Using an original data processing associated to univariate and multivariate data analysis, our study confirms that chemical profiles of urine samples stored at +4 °C are very rapidly modified, as observed for instance for compounds such as:N-acetyl Glycine, Adenosine, 4-Amino benzoic acid, N-Amino diglycine, creatine, glucuronic acid, 3-hydroxy-benzoic acid, pyridoxal, l-pyroglutamic acid, shikimic acid, succinic acid, thymidine, trigonelline and valeryl-carnitine, while it also demonstrates that urine samples stored at −20 °C exhibit a global stability over a long period with no major modifications compared to −80 °C condition. This study is the first to investigate long term stability of urine samples and report potential modifications in the urinary metabolome, using both targeted approach monitoring individually a large number (n > 200) of urinary metabolites and an untargeted strategy enabling assessing for global impact of storage conditions.

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