A metabolomics profiling study in hand-foot-and-mouth disease and modulated pathways of clinical intervention using liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD), with poorly understood pathogenesis, has become a major public health threat across Asia Pacific. In order to characterize the metabolic changes of HFMD and to unravel the regulatory role of clinical intervention, we have performed a metabolomics approach in a clinical trial. In this study, metabolites profiling was performed by liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) platform from the HFMD clinical patient samples. The outcome of this study suggested that 31 endogenous metabolites were mainly involved and showed marked perturbation in HFMD patients. In addition, combination therapy intervention showed normalized tendency in HFMD patients in differential pathway. Taken together, these results indicate that metabolomics approach can be used as a complementary tool for the detection and the study of the etiology of HFMD.