Alterations in urinary metabolomic profiles due to lead exposure from a lead–acid battery recycling site

Abstract Lead poisoning is considered a public health threat, particularly in developing countries. Health problems from Pb exposure occur in many parts of the world, especially near Pb mines, Pb smelters, and used lead–acid battery (ULAB) recycling plants. In this study, we analyzed the urine metabolome of residents in a village located near a ULAB recycling facility to investigate the biological effects of Pb exposure (ULAB: n  = 44, Reference: n  = 51). Lasso linear regression models were moderately predictive of blood Pb levels, as evaluated by a training set (R 2  = 0.813) and against an external test set (R 2 EXT  = 0.647). In lasso logistic regression models, areas under receiver operating characteristic curves, as measured by 5-fold cross-validation (AUC CV  = 0.871) and against an external test set (AUC EXT  = 0.917), indicated accurate classification of urine samples from the affected village and from a reference site. Ten candidate biomarkers identified at false discovery rates of