TABLE 4.

KEGG enrichment pathways altered in PDR patients compared with NPDR patients.

Pathway	Overlapping features	Pathway size	p-value
Arginine biosynthesis	4	14	1.1 × 10−4
Alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism	5	28	1.6 × 10−4
d-Glutamine and d-glutamate metabolism	2	6	5.5 × 10−3
Biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids	3	36	0.033
Pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis	2	19	0.043

With p-value ≤0.05 in the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, six metabolic pathways, including arginine biosynthesis metabolism (p = 1.1 × 10−4), alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism (p = 1.6 × 10−4), d-glutamine and d-glutamate metabolism (p = 5.5 × 10−3), biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids (p = 0.033), and pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis (p = 0.043), were considered to be the significant KEGG enrichment pathways. Overlapping features represent the number of metabolites enriched in the pathway, while pathway size describes the total number of metabolites in each pathway.