Metabolic profile of intact tissue from uterine leiomyomas using high-resolution magic-angle-spinning ¹H NMR spectroscopy.

High-resolution magic-angle-spinning (HRMAS) one- and two-dimensional (1)H and (13)C NMR spectroscopy was used to study intact healthy (myometrium) and benign (leiomyoma) uterine tissues of 10 patients. Twenty-eight metabolites were detected and assigned in both types of tissue. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to a conventional water-suppressed (1)H HRMAS NMR spectrum, and two NMR spectral editing methods, namely Carr-Purcell- Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) spin-echo and diffusion-edited techniques, were used. Only the PCA of CPMG spectra resulted in a good differentiation between the two tissue types. The CPMG spin-echo spectra were also useful in indicating depleted levels of taurine in uterine leiomyomas, which were well correlated with the histopathological determination. In addition, statistical analysis revealed that most leiomyomas contained elevated concentrations of glutamate and glutamine. Our results suggest that HRMAS represents a valuable adjunct to histopathology to improve the diagnostic accuracy of uterine leiomyomas, whilst concomitantly reducing the diagnosis time.