Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 28, 2016; 22(16): 4191-4200
Published online Apr 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i16.4191
Urinary nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of a Bangladeshi cohort with hepatitis-B hepatocellular carcinoma: A biomarker corroboration study
I Jane Cox, Abil E Aliev, Mary ME Crossey, Mahvish Dawood, Mamun Al-Mahtab, Sheikh M Akbar, Salimur Rahman, Antonio Riva, Roger Williams, Simon D Taylor-Robinson
I Jane Cox, Antonio Riva, Roger Williams, Institute of Hepatology, London, Foundation for Liver Research, London WC1E 6HX, United Kingdom
Abil E Aliev, Department of Chemistry, University College London, London WC1H 0AJ, United Kingdom
Mary ME Crossey, Mahvish Dawood, Simon D Taylor-Robinson, Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London W2 1NY, United Kingdom
Mamun Al-Mahtab, Salimur Rahman, Department of Hepatology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh
Sheikh M Akbar, Department of Medical Sciences, Toshiba General Hospital, Tokyo 140-8522, Japan
Author contributions: Cox IJ, Williams R, Taylor-Robinson SD, Al-Mahtab M, Rahman S and Akbar SM designed the research; Cox IJ, Crossey MME, Dawood M and Aliev AE performed the research; Cox IJ, Aliev AE, Dawood M and Riva A analyzed the data; Riva A provided statistical advice; Cox IJ, Taylor-Robinson SD, Al-Mahtab M and Williams R wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: Ethical approval was granted by the research ethics committee at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Imperial College London (REC 09/H0712/82).
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained from the study participants
Conflict-of-interest statement: To the best of our knowledge the authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: I Jane Cox, PhD, Institute of Hepatology, London, Foundation for Liver Research, 69-75 Chenies Mews, London WC1E 6HX, United Kingdom. j.cox@researchinliver.org.uk
Telephone: +44-207-2559830 Fax: +44-207-3800405
Received: December 1, 2015
Peer-review started: December 4, 2015
First decision: January 28, 2016
Revised: February 19, 2016
Accepted: March 1, 2016
Article in press: March 2, 2016
Published online: April 28, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Previous urinary metabolic profiling studies using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from Egypt and West Africa suggested the reproducibility of an identifying urinary metabolic profile in HCC. Here, a Bangladeshi HCC cohort was studied to identify similar changes. Urine samples from 142 subjects with hepatitis B HCC, cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis B, or no history of liver disease were analyzed using NMR. Urinary NMR from HCC differed across a range of metabolites, including reduced hippurate and creatinine and increased carnitine levels, consistent with the diverse effects of liver cancer on metabolic pathways and the interrelationship with the gut microbiome. Previous findings were corroborated, suggesting that a panel of metabolic markers could form the basis of a cost-effective HCC dipstick screening test.