Spot and Cumulative Urine Samples Are Suitable Replacements for 24-Hour Urine Collections for Objective Measures of Dietary Exposure in Adults Using Metabolite Biomarkers

Background: Measurement of multiple food intake exposure biomarkers in urine may offer an objective method for monitoring diet. The potential of spot and cumulative urine samples that have reduced burden on participants as replacements for 24-h urine collections has not been evaluated. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the utility of spot and cumulative urine samples for classifying the metabolic profiles of people according to dietary intake when compared with 24-h urine collections in a controlled dietary intervention study. Methods: Nineteen healthy individuals (10male, 9 female, aged 21-65 y, BMI 20-35 kg/m(2)) each consumed 4 distinctly different diets, each for 1 wk. Spot urine samples were collected similar to 2 h post meals on 3 intervention days/wk. Cumulative urine samples were collected daily over 3 separate temporal periods. A 24-h urine collection was created by combining the 3 cumulative urine samples. Urine samples were analyzed with metabolite fingerprinting by both high-resolution flow infusion electrospray mass spectrometry (FIE-HRMS) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1HNMR). Concentrations of dietary intake biomarkers were measured with liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometry and by integration of H-1-NMR data. Results: Cross-validation modeling with H-1-NMR and FIE-HRMS data demonstrated the power of spot and cumulative urine samples in predicting dietary patterns in 24-h urine collections. Particularly, there was no significant loss of information when post-dinner (PD) spot or overnight cumulative samples were substituted for 24-h urine collections (classification accuracies of 0.891 and 0.938, respectively). Quantitative analysis of urine samples also demonstrated the relation between PD spot samples and 24-h urines for dietary exposure biomarkers. Conclusions: We conclude that PD spot urine samples are suitable replacements for 24-h urine collections. Alternatively, cumulative samples collected overnight predict similarly to 24-h urine samples and have a lower collection burden for participants.