Developmental delineation of metabolic-patterns of neonatal mice by using NMR-metabolic profiling on highly-diluted urine.

Blood circulation and the route of nutritional supply both change dramatically in the immediate neonatal period. These systemic shifts lead to adjustment of metabolic patterns in the neonate, with alterations in the spectrum of metabolites in body fluids. We have investigated whether (1)H-NMR-based metabolic profiling (NMR-MP) with principal component analysis (PCA) can be used to evaluate metabolite profiles in highly-diluted samples of individual neonatal mouse urine. We report that a 60-fold dilution of urine gave a reproducible NMR-MP analysis. Here the NMR spectral patterns and PCA score plot clearly delineated the developmental changes in urine metabolites in the immediate neonatal period. These results suggest that NMR-MP may offer a powerful method for assessing the physiology and toxicity of chemicals in neonatal periods of experimental animals.