Plasma Lipidomics Identifies Unique Lipid Signatures and Potential Biomarkers for Patients With Aortic Dissection

Abstract

Aortic dissection (AD) is a catastrophic cardiovascular emergency with a poor prognosis, and little preceding symptoms. Abnormal lipid metabolism is closely related to the pathogenesis of AD. However, comprehensive lipid alterations related to AD pathogenesis remain unclear. Moreover, there is an urgent need for new or better biomarkers for improved risk assessment and surveillance of AD. Therefore, an untargeted lipidomic approach based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometry was employed to unveil plasma lipidomic alterations and potential biomarkers for AD patients in this study. We found that 278 of 439 identified lipid species were significantly altered in AD patients (n = 35) compared to normal controls (n = 32). Notably, most lipid species, including fatty acids, acylcarnitines, cholesteryl ester, ceramides, hexosylceramides, sphingomyelins, lysophosphatidylcholines, lysophosphatidylethanolamines, phosphatidylcholines, phosphatidylinositols, diacylglycerols, and triacylglycerols with total acyl chain carbon number ≥54 and/or total double bond number ≥4 were decreased, whereas phosphatidylethanolamines and triacylglycerols with total double bond number <4 accumulated in AD patients. Besides, the length and unsaturation of acyl chains in triacylglycerols and unsaturation of 1-acyl chain in phosphatidylethanolamines were decreased in AD patients. Moreover, lysophosphatidylcholines were the lipids with the largest alterations, at the center of correlation networks of lipid alterations, and had excellent performances in identifying AD patients. The area under the curve of 1.0 and accuracy rate of 100% could be easily obtained by lysophosphatidylcholine (20:0/0:0) or its combination with lysophosphatidylcholine (17:0/0:0) or lysophosphatidylcholine (20:1/0:0). This study provides novel and comprehensive plasma lipidomic signatures of AD patients, identifies lysophosphatidylcholines as excellent potential biomarkers, and would be beneficial to the pathogenetic study, risk assessment and timely diagnosis and treatment of AD.

Metabolomic Profile Reveals That Ceramide Metabolic Disturbance Plays an Important Role in Thoracic Aortic Dissection

“…Beyond that, we were more interested in another enriched pathway, sphingolipids, which were recently focused as a variety of cardiovascular diseases drivers and biomarkers. Consistent with previous studies, most sphingolipids including various sphingomyelins were significantly decreased in TAD ( Supplementary Figure 2 ) ( 5 , 7 ). However, we noticed significantly increased C18-ceramide content in the plasma of TAD patients, but not in TAA, from which we hypothesized that ceramide might play a role in TAD incidence.…”

“…This approach has provided valuable insight into novel pathologic pathways and potential biomarkers in several cardiovascular diseases ( 3 ), such as cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure, coronary artery disease, and cardiovascular risk prediction. To the best of our knowledge, only a few studies ( 4 – 7 ) have focused on thoracic aortic diseases, and the findings have suggested that several bioactive lipids, such as glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids and lysophosphatidylcholines ( 7 ), as well as some other metabolites, such as fumarate ( 8 ) and succinate ( 9 ), are significantly altered in aortic disease.…”

Serum Oxylipin Profiles Identify Potential Biomarkers in Patients with Acute Aortic Dissection

“…Recent studies have reported various omics in AD serum. Huang et al reported serum lipidomics in AD and 278 of 439 identified lipid species were significantly altered in two groups [ 45 ]. They finally identified lysophosphatidylcholines as excellent potential biomarkers in the diagnosis and treatment of AD.…”

CircRNA MBOAT2 promotes intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma progression and lipid metabolism reprogramming by stabilizing PTBP1 to facilitate FASN mRNA cytoplasmic export

“…Lipid extraction and mass spectrometry-based lipid detection of cell pellets were performed as described by experimental operation of Huang et al 52 . A quality control sample was prepared by mixing equal parts of the samples.…”