IC patients and healthy subjects were preprocessed as previously described.13 (link) We excluded one subject from the IC patient
group and three subjects from the control group because their spectra
were outliers based on PCA analysis. Fourier transformation and phase
and baseline correction of the time domain data were manually performed.
The resulting frequency domain data were binned at a 0.002 ppm interval.
The signals were normalized against total integration values and 0.025%
TSP. The region corresponding to water (4.6–5.0 ppm) was removed
from all spectra. Data pretreatment including baseline correction,
chromatogram alignment, time-window setting, hierarchical multivariate
curve resolution, H-MCR, and normalization were performed in MATLAB
(version 7.3) using custom scripts. Identification of detected NMR
spectra was performed using VNMRS500 (Varian Inc.). The metabolites
were identified by a database search, based on spectra and chromatographic
retention index, using Chenomx (spectral database; Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada) by fitting the experimental spectra to those in the database.