Metabonomic Variations in the Drug-Treated Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients and Healthy Volunteers

The pathological development and the drug intervention of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) involve altered expression of downstream low molecular weight metabolites including lipids and amino acids, and carbohydrates such as glucose. Currently, a small number of markers used for clinical assessment of T2DM treatment may be insufficient to reflect global variations in pathophysiology. In this study, a metabonomic study was performed to determine metabolic variations associated with T2DM and the drug treatments on 74 patients who were newly diagnosed with T2DM and received a 48 week treatment of a single drug, repaglinide, metformin or rosiglitazone. Fasting overnight and 2 h postprandial blood serum of patients were collected at 24 and 48 weeks to monitor the biochemical indices (FPG, 2hPG, HbA1c, etc.). Gas chromatography/mass spectrometer coupled with multivariate statistical analysis was used to identify the alteration of global serum metabolites associated with T2DM as compared to healthy controls and r...