Evaluation of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy for Diagnosis of Peroxisomal Diseases with Abnormal Very-Long-Chain Fatty Acid Metabolism

Abstract

Very long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) are accumulated in cells and blood in patients with peroxisomal diseases, such as adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) and Zellwger Syndrome (ZS). The purpose of this study is to investigate usefulness of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) with attenuated total reflection (ATR) analysis method for clinical diagnosis of those diseases, thereby we measured the infrared spectra of the sera of patients and healthy controls. Correlation coefficients between 2nd derivative FTIR spectra of the serum samples and the VLCFA content ratio which is used as a clinical parameter to date were comprehensively calculated to investigate which wavenumber showed high correlation with the VLCFA ratio. Multiple regression analysis using the serum FTIR spectra showed that high correlations were observed with VLCFA ratios (C26:0/C22:0 ratio), and we could construct a suitable regression model (R2 = 0.97, p < 3.2 × 10 ﹣19 ). In addition, the model system using various VLCFAs in newborn bovine serum also showed that several FTIR peaks in 800 ~ 900 cm ﹣1 region were found to have good correlation with VLCFA ratios. Our results support that FTIR analysis is useful for diagnosis of peroxisomal diseases.