Metabolic abnormalities associated with diabetes mellitus, as investigated by gas chromatography and pattern-recognition analysis of profiles of volatile metabolites.

Patterns of volatile metabolites in urine, as obtained by glass-capillary gas chromatography, were investigated by use of a nonparametric pattern-recognition method, in an effort to detect abnormalities associated with diabetes. We used threshold logic unit analysis on a data set consisting of normal subjects and those with diabetes mellitus, and could predict patterns for volatile metabolites as belonging to the proper class in 94.83% of the cases examined. In addition, a feature-extraction algorithm isolated those volatile constituents that are most useful in making the normal/diabetic classification. We used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to identify important profile constituents. Finally, these same pattern-recognition methods indicated strong sex-related patterns in these volatiles.