Plasma Metabolomics Study in Lung Cancer Screening and Differential Diagnosis

[Objectives] By studying the plasma metabolomics of patients with different pulmonary nodules and healthy people, we can find the difference in plasma low-molecular metabolites among them. [Methods] Patients with pulmonary nodules admitted to our department were divided into three groups: pulmonary metastatic carcinoma (PMC), benign pulmonary nodules (BPN), and primary lung cancer (PLC). Meanwhile healthy people were enrolled as healthy population group (HPG). PLC and HPG were equally divided into the Discovery Set and Validation set. [Results] Five significant low-molecular metabolites were found by comparison of four groups as a whole. Four to six metabolites were selected by comparison of the three pulmonary nodule groups with healthy people respectively. The AUC of ROC of these metabolites were all＞0.93. Each pairwise comparison within the three pulmonary nodule groups all found three metabolites, whose AUC of ROC were all＞0.83. From the comparison of PLC and HPG in the discovery set, six metabolites were selected. Their AUC of ROC were all greater than 0.95 in the validation set, indicating that they had a strong ability to differentiate between primary lung cancer and healthy people. [Conclusions] We can find the significant changes of some low-molecular metabolites among three pulmonary nodules and healthy people. These metabolites had the potential to be biomarkers for screening and differential diagnosis of lung cancer.