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Diagnostic test accurately distinguished fibromyalgia from RA, OA
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Mid-infrared microspectroscopy was more effective than metabolic analysis in analyzing blood spots to accurately differentiate patients with fibromyalgia from those with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis, according to study results.
Researchers collected blood samples from patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia (FM; n=14), rheumatoid arthritis (RA; n=15) or osteoarthritis (OA; n=12). Mid-infrared microspectroscopy (IRMS) was used to collect spectra after the samples were prepared for a highly reflective slide. Multivariate statistical modeling analyzed spectra to differentiate groups.
No misclassification of patients with FM, RA or OA occurred when metabolomic analysis was performed on samples. IMRS determined interclass distances of 15.4 (FM vs. RA), 14.7 (FM vs. OA) and 2.5 (RA vs.OA), indicating its ability to attain reliable resolution of specific spectral patterns unique to FM.
For metabolomic analysis, 100 mcL of supernatant resulting from solvent-extracted punches from blood spot cards from 10 patients each with FM, RA and OA were used. RA and OA patients had metabolic similarities, while the FM cohort had biochemical differences that were distinctive by comparison.
Changes in tryptophan catabolism pathway were identified by IRMS and metabolic analysis, which differentiated patients with FM from RA or OA patients.
“While both methods were able to obtain informative results using blood spot samples, the IRMS approach differentiated FM subjects from the RA and OA groups with zero misclassifications (100% accuracy),” the researchers concluded, while the accuracy of metabolomics was 75%.
“Additionally, the cost of IRMS analysis was lower than that of the metabolomics approach,” the researchers said. “The primary limitation of the IRMS approach is that it cannot definitively identify the substance(s) responsible for the diagnostic spectral pattern, whereas the … metabolic data produced a prioritized list of molecules that may underlie the identified differences.”
Disclosure: Relevant financial disclosures were not provided by researchers.
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