Pyruvate showed a strong positive correlation with lactate which remained significant after Bonferroni correction (r = 0.738, p ≤ 0.001) and glucose (r = 0.496, p = 0.006), but the correlation with glucose did not pass the Bonferroni correction level. Glutamate showed the strongest correlation with lactate although not significant (r = 0.375, p = 0.049).