Biomedical subjects

Muireann Coen

Publications and source records attributed to Muireann Coen.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Antifungal effects on metabolite profiles of medically important yeast species measured by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Drug-induced inhibition of fungal growth is used in the diagnostic laboratory to predict therapeutic efficacy but is relatively slow, and determination of endpoints can be problematic. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy identifies the metabolic complement of microorganisms while monitoring utilization of constituents of the incubation medium. This technique may provide a rapid and objective indicator of antifungal effects. We evaluated the effects of caspofungin, amphotericin B (AMB), and voriconazole on metabolic profiles of yeast species cultured in RPMI-2% glucose-morpholinepropanesulfonic acid buffer in microtiter plates in a proof-of-principle study. 1H NMR spectra were obtained using Bruker NMR spectrometers at 1H frequencies of 600 and 360 MHz. Metabolites were identified by two-dimensional correlation NMR spectra, and relative peak integrals were calculated from one-dimensional 1H NMR spectra. MICs were determined by a modification of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute broth microdilution method M27-A. Utilization of glucose and branched-chain and aromatic amino acid substrates was accompanied by fungal production of acetate, acetaldehyde, ethanol, formate, fumarate, glycerol, lactate, pyruvate, and succinate. Clear-cut metabolic endpoints indicating a greater than 50% reduction in substrate utilization and fungal metabolite production which correlated with MICs were noted at 16 and 24 h for all three drugs. At 8 h, reductions of greater than 50% for selected metabolites were noted for caspofungin and AMB. Direct NMR-based observation of metabolic alterations in yeast cultures reveals changes in key metabolic pathways and should be evaluated formally as a rapid technique for determining susceptibility to antifungal drugs.

Amphotericin B↗

PubMed2005

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabonomics for rapid diagnosis of meningitis and ventriculitis.

BACKGROUND: Reduction of mortality associated with bacterial meningitis and postsurgical cerebral ventriculitis is dependent on early diagnosis and institution of appropriate therapy. Metabonomics rapidly defines metabolic profiles of biological fluids through the use of high-throughput analytical techniques combined with statistical pattern recognition tools. METHODS: Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR)-based metabonomics was applied to (1) lumbar cerebrospinal fluid samples collected prospectively from a cohort of patients with bacterial, fungal, or viral meningitis and from control subjects without neurological disease and (2) ventricular cerebrospinal fluid samples from patients with ventriculitis associated with an external ventricular drain and from control subjects. 1H NMR spectra were analyzed by the unsupervised statistical method of principal components analysis. RESULTS: Metabonomic analysis clearly distinguished patients with bacterial or fungal meningitis (11 patients) from patients with viral meningitis (12) and control subjects (27) and clearly distinguished patients with postsurgical ventriculitis (5) from postsurgical control subjects (10). Metabolites of microbial and host origin that were responsible for class separation were determined. Metabonomic data also correlated with the onset and course of infection in a patient with 2 episodes of bacterial ventriculitis and with response to therapy in another patient with cryptococcal meningitis. CONCLUSIONS: Metabonomic analysis is rapid, requires minimal sample processing, and is not targeted to specific microbial pathogens, making the platform potentially suitable for use in the diagnostic laboratory. This pilot study indicates that metabonomic analysis of cerebrospinal fluid is feasible and a potentially more powerful diagnostic tool than conventional rapid laboratory indicators for distinguishing bacterial from viral meningitis and for monitoring therapy. This should have important implications for early management, reduced empirical use of antibiotics, and treatment duration.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Probing molecular dynamics in chromatographic systems using high-resolution 1H magic-angle-spinning NMR spectroscopy: interaction between p-Xylene and C18-bonded silica.

The exact nature of the interaction between small molecules and chromatographic solid phases has been the subject of much research, but detailed understanding of the molecular dynamics in such systems remains elusive. High-resolution (1)H magic-angle-spinning (MAS) NMR spectroscopy has been applied to the investigation of C18-bonded silica material as used in chromatographic separation techniques together with an adsorbed model analyte, p-xylene. Two distinct p-xylene and water environments were identified within the C18-bonded silica through the measurement of (1)H NMR chemical shifts, T(1) and T(2) relaxation times and diffusion coefficients, including their temperature dependence. The results have been analyzed in terms of two environments, p-xylene within the C18 chains, in slow exchange on the NMR time scale with p-xylene in a more mobile state adsorbed as a layer in close proximity to the C18 particles, but which is distinct from free liquid p-xylene. The techniques used here could have more general applications, including the study of drug molecules bound into phospholipid membranes in micelles or vesicles.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Integrated application of transcriptomics and metabonomics yields new insight into the toxicity due to paracetamol in the mouse.

Gene chip array (Affymetrix) data from liver tissue and high resolution 1H NMR spectra from intact liver tissue, tissue extracts and plasma have been analyzed to identify biochemical changes arising from hepatotoxicity in mice dosed with acetaminophen. These data sets have been co-interpreted in terms of common metabolic pathways. The principal metabolic changes comprised a decrease in hepatic glucose and glycogen in intact tissue, coupled with an increase in lipid content, with increases in the levels of glucose, pyruvate, acetate and lactate in plasma, and increases in alanine and lactate in the aqueous tissue extracts. Collectively these data provide evidence for an increased rate of hepatic glycolysis. The metabolic observations were consistent with the altered levels of gene expression relating to lipid and energy metabolism in liver which both preceded and were concurrent with the metabolic perturbations. The results show that these two technology platforms together offer a complementary view into cellular responses to toxic processes, providing new insight into the toxic consequences, even for well-studied therapeutic agents such as acetaminophen.

Acetaminophen↗

PubMed2003

An integrated metabonomic investigation of acetaminophen toxicity in the mouse using NMR spectroscopy.

An integrated metabonomics study using high-resolution 1H NMR spectroscopy has been applied to investigate the biochemical composition of intact liver tissue (using magic angle spinning), liver tissue extracts, and blood plasma samples obtained from control and acetaminophen-treated mice. Principal components analysis was used to visualize similarities and differences in biochemical profiles. The time- and dose-dependent biochemical effects of acetaminophen were related to the drug toxicity, as determined using histopathology. Metabolic effects in intact liver tissue and lipid soluble liver tissue extracts from animals treated with the high dose level of acetaminophen included an increase in lipid triglycerides and monounsaturated fatty acids together with a decrease in polyunsaturated fatty acids, indicating mitochondrial malfunction with concomitant compensatory increase of peroxisomal activity. In addition, a depletion of phospholipids was observed in treated liver tissue, which suggested an inhibition of enzymes involved in phospholipid synthesis. There was also a depletion in the levels of liver glucose and glycogen. In addition, the aqueous soluble liver tissue extracts from high dose animals also revealed an increase in lactate, alanine, and other amino acids, together with a decrease in glucose. Plasma spectra showed increases in glucose, acetate, pyruvate, and lactate. These observations all provide evidence for an increased rate of glycolysis. These findings could indicate a mitochondrial inability to use pyruvate in the citric acid cycle and also reveal the impairment of fatty acid beta-oxidation in liver mitochondria of such treated mice.

Acetaminophen↗

PubMed2002

Application of orthogonal signal correction to minimise the effects of physical and biological variation in high resolution 1H NMR spectra of biofluids.

1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabonomics is a well-established technique used to analyse and interpret complex multiparametric metabolic data, and has a wide number of applications in the development of pharmaceuticals. However, interpretation of biological data can be confounded by extraneous variation in the data such as fluctuations in either experimental conditions or in physiological status. Here we have shown the novel application of a data filtering method, orthogonal signal correction (OSC), to biofluid NMR data to minimise the influence of inter- and intra-spectrometer variation during data acquisition, and also to minimise innate physiological variation. The removal of orthogonal variation exposed features of interest in the NMR data and facilitated interpretation of the derived multivariate models. Furthermore, analysis of the orthogonal variation provided an explanation of the systematic analytical/biological changes responsible for confounding the original NMR data.

Blood Chemical Analysis↗