Improving the management of neonatal diseases and prevention of chronic diseases in adulthood requires a better comprehension of the complex maturational processes associated with newborns' development. Urine-based metabolomic studies play a promising role in the fields of pediatrics and neonatology, relying on simple and noninvasive collection procedures while integrating a variety of factors such as genotype, nutritional state, lifestyle, and diseases. Here, we investigate the influence of age, weight, height, and gender on the urine metabolome during the first 4 months of life. Untargeted analysis of urine was carried out by 1H-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy for 90 newborns under 4 months of age, and free of metabolic, nephrologic, or urologic diseases. Supervised multivariate statistical analysis of the metabolic profiles revealed metabolites significantly associated with age, weight, and height, respectively. The tremendous growth occurring during the neonatal period is associated with specific modifications of newborns' metabolism. Conversely, gender appears to have no impact on the urine metabolome during early infancy. These results allow a deeper understanding of newborns' metabolic maturation and underline potential confounding factors in newborns' metabolomics studies. We emphasize the need to systematically and precisely report children age, height, and weight that impact urine metabolic profiles of infants.
Keywords: NMR spectroscopy; growth; metabolic profiles; metabolomics; newborns; urine.