Objectives: Arsenic is a toxic metal ubiquitous in the environment and in daily life items. Long-term arsenic exposure is associated with severe adverse health effects involving various target organs. It would be useful to investigate the existence of metabolic alterations associated with lifestyle and/or with the environment. For this purpose, we studied the correlation between urinary arsenic levels and urinary proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H NMR) metabolomics profiles in a non-occupationally nor environmentally arsenic exposed general population.

Methods: Urine samples were collected from 86 healthy subjects. Total and non-alimentary urinary arsenic (U-naAs) levels, namely the sum of arsenite, arsenate, monomethylarsonate and dimethylarsinate, were measured and ¹H NMR analysis was performed. Orthogonal Projection to Latent Structures was applied to explore the correlation between the metabolomics profiles and U-naAs levels.

Results: Despite the extremely low U-naAs levels (mean value = 6.13 ± 3.17 µg/g creatinine) of our studied population a urinary metabolomics profile related to arsenic was identified.

Conclusion: The identified profile could represent a fingerprint of early arsenic biological effect and could be used in further studies as an indicator of susceptibility, also in subjects exposed to a low arsenic dose, with implications in occupational health, toxicology, and public health.

目标：砷是一种在环境和日常生活物品中普遍存在的有毒金属。长期接触砷与涉及各种靶器官的严重不良健康影响相关。研究与生活方式和/或环境有关的代谢改变的存在将是有用的。为此，我们研究了非职业性或环境性砷暴露的普通人群中尿砷水平与尿质子核磁共振波谱（¹ H NMR）代谢组学谱之间的相关性。

方法：从86名健康受试者中采集尿液样本。测量总和非营养性尿砷（U-naAs）水平，即亚砷酸盐，砷酸盐，一甲基砷酸盐和二甲基砷酸盐的总和，并进行¹ H NMR分析。正交投影到潜在结构被用来探讨代谢组学概况与U-naAs水平之间的相关性。

结果：尽管我们研究人群的U-naAs水平极低（平均值= 6.13±3.17 µg / g肌酐），但仍鉴定出与砷有关的尿代谢组学概况。

结论：确定的特征可以代表早期砷生物学作用的指纹，并且可以在进一步研究中用作易感性的指标，也适用于暴露于低砷剂量的受试者，对职业健康，毒理学和公共卫生具有影响。