Table 3.

A comprehensive comparison of key characteristics between (MS) and (NMR) techniques.

Characteristic	MS	NMR	References
Sensitivity	High	Low	[24,25]
Reproducibility	Moderate	Very high
Type of sample	Liquid	Liquid and tissue
Sample preparation	Complex	Simple
Sample recovery	Destructive	Non-destructive
Analyte identification	Easy	Difficult
Metabolite database	Only uniform for GC-MS	Uniform
Number of known identifiable metabolites	Thousands of metabolites in a single measurement	Hundreds of metabolites in a single measurement
Common techniques	GC-MS, LC-MS	H&C NMR, 2D-NMR
Quantification	Not fully quantitative without appropriate standards	Quantitative