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Metabolic Snapshot of Plasma Samples Reveals New Pathways Implicated in SARS-CoV-2 Pathogenesis.

Oihane E AlbónigaDaniel JiménezMatilde Sánchez-CondePilar VizcarraRaquel RonSabina HerreraJavier Martínez-SanzElena MorenoSantiago MorenoCoral BarbasSergio Serrano-Villar
Published in: Journal of proteome research (2022)
Despite the scientific and human efforts to understand COVID-19, there are questions still unanswered. Variations in the metabolic reaction to SARS-CoV-2 infection could explain the striking differences in the susceptibility to infection and the risk of severe disease. Here, we used untargeted metabolomics to examine novel metabolic pathways related to SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 clinical severity using capillary electrophoresis coupled to a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (CE-TOF-MS) in plasma samples. We included 27 patients with confirmed COVID-19 and 29 healthcare workers heavily exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but with low susceptibility to infection ("nonsusceptible"). We found a total of 42 metabolites of SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility or COVID-19 clinical severity. We report the discovery of new plasma biomarkers for COVID-19 that provide mechanistic explanations for the clinical consequences of SARS-CoV-2, including mitochondrial and liver dysfunction as a consequence of hypoxemia (citrulline, citric acid, and 3-aminoisobutyric acid (BAIBA)), energy production and amino acid catabolism (phenylalanine and histidine), and endothelial dysfunction and thrombosis (citrulline, asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), and 2-aminobutyric acid (2-AB)), and we found interconnections between these pathways. In summary, in this first report several metabolic pathways implicated in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 clinical progression were found by CE-MS based metabolomics that could be developed as biomarkers of COVID-19.
Keyphrases
  • sars cov
  • respiratory syndrome coronavirus
  • mass spectrometry
  • coronavirus disease
  • capillary electrophoresis
  • multiple sclerosis
  • ms ms
  • endothelial cells
  • amino acid
  • pulmonary embolism
  • early onset