Acute leukemia is a critical neoplasm of white blood cells. In order to differentiate between the metabolic alterations associated with two subtypes of acute leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), we investigated the serum of ALL and AML patients and compared with two controls (healthy and aplastic anemia) using ¹H NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy. Thirty-seven putative metabolites were identified using Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) sequence. The use of PLS-DA and OPLS-DA models gave results with 84.38% and 90.63% classification rate, respectively. The metabolites responsible for classification are mainly lipids, lactate and glucose. Compared with controls, ALL and AML patients showed serum metabonomic differences involving aberrant metabolism pathways including glycolysis, TCA cycle, lipoprotein changes, choline and fatty acid metabolisms.

β-Thalassemia is one of the most prevalent forms of congenital blood disorders characterized by reduced hemoglobin levels with severe complications, affecting all dimensions of life. The mechanisms underlying the phenotypic heterogeneity of β-thalassemia are still poorly understood. We aimed to work over metabolite biomarkers to improve mechanistic understanding of phenotypic heterogeneity and hence better management of disorder at different levels. Untargeted serum metabolites were analyzed after protein precipitation and SPE (solid phase extraction) from 100 β-thalassemia patients and 61 healthy controls using GC-MS. 40 metabolites were identified having a significance difference between these two groups at probability of 0.05 and fold change >1.5. Out of these 40 metabolites, 17 were up-regulated while 23 were down-regulated. PCA and PLS-DA model was also created that revealed a fine separation with a sensitivity of 70% and specificity of 100% on external validation of samples. Metabolic pathway analysis revealed alteration in multiple pathways including glycolysis, pyruvate, propanoate, glycerophospholipid, galactose, fatty acid, starch and sucrose metabolism along with fatty acid elongation in mitochondria, glycerolipid, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism pointing towards the shift of metabolism in β-thalassemia patients in comparison to healthy individuals.

Large scale usage of tobacco causes a lot of health troubles in human. Various formulations of tobacco are extensively used by the people particularly in developing world. Besides several toxic tobacco constituents some metals and metalloids are also believed to pose health risks. This paper describes inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometric (ICP-MS) quantification of some important metals and metalloids in various brands of smoked, sniffed, dipped and chewed tobacco products.