Disease-Associated Multimolecular Signature in the Urine of Patients with Lyme Disease Detected Using Raman Spectroscopy and Chemometrics

Abstract

A urine-based screening technique for Lyme disease (LD) was developed in this research. The screen is based on Raman spectroscopy, iterative smoothing-splines with root error adjustment (ISREA) spectral baselining, and chemometric analysis using Rametrix software. Raman spectra of urine from 30 patients with positive serologic tests (including the US Centers for Disease Control [CDC] two-tier standard) for LD were compared against subsets of our database of urine spectra from 235 healthy human volunteers, 362 end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients, and 17 patients with active or remissive bladder cancer (BCA). We found statistical differences (p < 0.001) between urine scans of healthy volunteers and LD-positive patients. We also found a unique LD molecular signature in urine involving 112 Raman shifts (31 major Raman shifts) with significant differences from urine of healthy individuals. We were able to distinguish the LD molecular signature as statistically different (p < 0.001) from the molecular signatures of ESKD and BCA. When comparing LD-positive patients against healthy volunteers, the Rametrix-based urine screen performed with 86.7% for overall accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV), respectively. When considering patients with ESKD and BCA in the LD-negative group, these values were 88.7% (accuracy), 83.3% (sensitivity), 91.0% (specificity), 80.7% (PPV), and 92.4% (NPV). Additional advantages to the Raman-based urine screen include that it is rapid (minutes per analysis), is minimally invasive, requires no chemical labeling, uses a low-profile, off-the-shelf spectrometer, and is inexpensive relative to other available LD tests.

Graphical Abstract