Lipidome changes in alcohol‐related brain damage

Abstract

Alcohol‐related brain injury is characterized by cognitive deficits and brain atrophy with the prefrontal cortex particularly susceptible. White matter in the human brain is lipid rich and a major target of damage from chronic alcohol abuse; yet, there is sparse information on how these lipids are affected. Here, we used untargeted lipidomics as a discovery tool to describe these changes in the prefrontal, middle temporal, and visual cortices of human subjects with alcohol use disorder and controls. Significant changes to the lipidome, predominantly in the prefrontal and visual cortices, and differences between the white and grey matter of each brain region were identified. These effects include broad decreases to phospholipids and ceramide, decreased polyunsaturated fatty acids, decreased sphingadiene backbones, and selective decreases in cholesteryl ester fatty acid chains. Our findings show that chronic alcohol abuse results in selective changes to the neurolipidome, which likely reflects both the directs effects on the brain and concurrent effects on the liver.

Bibliometric and visualized mapping: two decades of lipidomics, with special focus on pregancy and women

“…Plasma was the pervasive tissue for lipidomics extraction, however specific tissue would be utilized in a specific disease. For example, white matter in the brain is lipid-rich tissue which was a target for lipid research (Smith et al, 2022), especially in Alzheimer’s disease (Xu et al, 2020; Zhang et al, 2020a).…”

“…This phenomenon might be attributed to serum having relatively low levels of the same amount of blood. Brain-lipidomics were always specific diseases, such as alcoholic brain injury (Smith et al, 2022), Alzheimer’s disease (Lauer et al, 2021), and neuro inflammatory disease (Derada Troletti et al, 2021). Adipose tissue contains abundant lipids and can be classified into two subtypes, white and brown adipose tissue (Grzybek et al, 2019).…”

Novel insight into the lipid network of plasma extracellular vesicles reveal sex-based differences in the lipidomic profile of alcohol use disorder patients

“…Chronic alcohol consumption compromises the microstructural integrity of the WM through demyelination, dysmyelination and axonal degeneration, leading to widespread volume loss at the macrostructural level [ 72 ]. In fact, all studies with postmortem brain tissue from AUD patients or animal models conclude that the most affected regions showed a broad and significant decrease in glycerophospholipids and sulfatides, the most abundant and characteristic lipid subclass of myelin [ 73 – 75 ], as well as ceramides, polyunsaturated fatty acids and cholesteryl ester fatty acid chains [ 76 ].…”