Metabolic phenotyping in the mouse model of urinary tract infection shows that 3-hydroxybutyrate in plasma is associated with infection

Urinary tract infection is one of the most common bacterial infections worldwide. Current diagnosis of urinary tract infection chiefly relies on its clinical presentation, urine dipstick tests and urine culture. Small molecules found in bio-fluids related with both infection and recovery would facilitate diagnosis and management of UTI. Mass spectrometry-based fingerprinting of plasma and urine at 3 time points, pre-infection (t = -24h), infection (t = 24h) and post 3-day treatment (t = 112h), were acquired in the following four groups: mice which were healthy, infected but not treated, infected and treated with ciprofloxacin, and infected and treated with Relinqing® granules (n = 6 per group). A metabolomics workflow including multivariate analysis and ROC regression was employed to select metabolic features that correlated with UTI and its treatment. Circa 4,000 molecular features were acquired for each sample. The small acid 3-hydroxybutyrate in plasma was found to be differentiated for urinary tract infection, with an area under the curve = 0.97 (95% confidence interval: 0.93-1.00, accuracy = 0.91, sensitivity = 0.92 and specificity = 0.91). The level of 3-hydroxybutyrate in plasma was depleted after infection with a fold change of -22 (q < 0.0001). Correlation between plasma 3-hydroxybutyrate and urine bacterial number in all groups and time points was r = -0.753 (p < 0.0001). The findings show that 3-hydroxybutyrate is depleted in blood and strongly associated with UTI at both infection and post-treatment stage in a UTI mouse model. Further work is envisaged to assess the clinical potential of blood tests to assist with UTI management.