Using an untargeted metabolomics approach to analyze serum metabolites in COVID-19 patients with nucleic acid turning negative

Hot off the press, just published today in Frontiers in Pharmacology. A group of researchers in China used metabolomics (measuring the concentration of many metabolism-related chemicals in the blood) to compare healthy controls with Covid-19 patients who were admitted to Jiaxing Hospital, but just started testing negative. This gives us a snapshot into how the metabolism functions immediately after fighting off severe Covid-19, though they didn't consider whether patients had long Covid at all. Interestingly, they found differences in lipid metabolism, which have also been found in ME/CFS (S4ME thread)--although levels were mostly raised in people who just recovered from acute Covid, but lowered in ME/CFS. Below is the abstract.

Using an untargeted metabolomics approach to analyze serum metabolites in COVID-19 patients with nucleic acid turning negative
Background: The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is a severe public health issue that has infected millions of people. The effective prevention and control of COVID-19 has resulted in a considerable increase in the number of cured cases. However, little research has been done on a complete metabonomic examination of metabolic alterations in COVID-19 patients following treatment. The current project pursues rigorously to characterize the variation of serum metabolites between healthy controls and COVID-19 patients with nucleic acid turning negative via untargeted metabolomics.

Methods: The metabolic difference between 20 COVID-19 patients (CT ≥ 35) and 20 healthy controls were investigated utilizing untargeted metabolomics analysis employing High-resolution UHPLC-MS/MS. COVID-19 patients’ fundamental clinical indicators, as well as health controls, were also collected.

Results: Out of the 714 metabolites identified, 203 still significantly differed between COVID-19 patients and healthy controls, including multiple amino acids, fatty acids, and glycerophospholipids. The clinical indexes including monocytes, lymphocytes, albumin concentration, total bilirubin and direct bilirubin have also differed between our two groups of participators.

Conclusion: Our results clearly showed that in COVID-19 patients with nucleic acid turning negative, their metabolism was still dysregulated in amino acid metabolism and lipid metabolism, which could be the mechanism of long-COVID and calls for specific post-treatment care to help COVID-19 patients recover.

 

Snapshot from the same study. Yet one more study mentions the liver. Normal liver enzymes ALT, AST, GGT cannot rule out liver disease or impaired liver function. Limitations of study : Larger sample and more time points required