Urine is a biological matrix that contains hundreds of metabolic end products which constitute the urinary metabolome. The development and advances on LC–MS/MS have revolutionized the analytical study of biomolecules by enabling their accurate identification and quantification in an unprecedented manner. Nowadays, LC–MS/MS is helping to unveil the complexity of urine metabolome, and the results obtained have multiple biomedical applications. This review focuses on the targeted LC–MS/MS analysis of the urine metabolome. In the first part, we describe general considerations (from sample collection to quantitation) required for a proper targeted metabolic analysis. In the second part, we address the urinary analysis and recent applications of four relevant families: amino acids, catecholamines, lipids and steroids.
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Keywords:
- amino acids
- LC–MS/MS
- lipids
- neurotransmitters
- quantitation
- steroids
- targeted metabolomics
- untargeted metabolomics
- urine