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Nightingale Health NMR Platform

Summary

The Nightingale Health NMR Platform is a high-throughput technology that uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to quantify a broad panel of circulating biomarkers in blood (serum or plasma). The platform provides detailed metabolic profiling, including the concentration and composition of lipoprotein subclasses (VLDL, IDL, LDL, HDL of varying particle sizes), apolipoproteins (ApoA1, ApoB), fatty acids, and small molecules (amino acids, ketone bodies, glycolysis precursors, and inflammation markers like glycoprotein acetylation).

Platform Characterization and Technical Considerations

The platform has been used extensively in large biobanks and cohorts, including the UK Biobank, the INTERVAL BioResource, and FINRISK. In 2020 (as of 2020-12-31), Nightingale Health corrected an issue in their quantification software where acetone was incorrectly labelled as acetoacetate.

Metabolic associations derived from this platform are highly sensitive to participant characteristics and sample pre-treatment methods: - Sample Type (Serum vs. Plasma): Associations can differ significantly. For example, phenylalanine associations with coagulation-related loci (e.g., KLKB1, F12, KNG1, and FGB) are observable in serum but absent in EDTA plasma due to the removal of clotting factors during serum preparation. - Fasting Status (Fasted vs. Non-Fasted): Fasting status can act as a major driver of non-replication. For instance, the association of glucose at the MTNR1B and GLIS3 loci is robust in fasted cohorts but absent in non-fasted samples (such as those predominant in the UK Biobank).

Citations

  • Karjalainen, M. K., Karthikeyan, S., Oliver-Williams, C., et al. (2024). Genome-wide characterization of circulating metabolic biomarkers. Nature, 628, 130–138. Source paper: s41586-024-07148-y.pdf