Figure 1

Study design and evaluation of DRG quality (a) Schematic representation of study design. Innervation pattern for L4, L5, and S1 DRG used in analyses overlap with painful region in DPN. Created with BioRender. (b) Heat map showing scaled and centered relative abundance data for select metabolites. Abnormally high profiles of all metabolites here would be indicative of tissue degradation. Two samples show higher abundance of some metabolites. However, these levels are reasonable for normal biological variation, and profiles of all noted metabolites are not observed to be consistently high. As such, DRG samples were determined to be of quality allowable for analysis. Row-wise annotations indicate degradative process which might produce indicated metabolites. CON control samples, DPN diabetic peripheral neuropathy.